The Tremont, Pa., area has roughly 2,000 residents and limited resources. The Trump administration plans to convert a warehouse there to hold nearly four times as many people.

Photos: The Department of Homeland Security plans to turn a warehouse in Tremont, Pa., into an immigrant detention center, but many local residents complain that they have been given little input. Credit…Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times

By Chris Hippensteel

The New York Times

Reporting from Tremont and Pottsville, Pa.

• April 9, 2026 – When the coal industry unraveled around Tremont, Pa., generations ago, it didn’t leave much behind. Nestled in the valleys of central Pennsylvania, the old mining town today has no hospital and no independent police force. A Family Dollar serves as its only grocery store. For years, the water supply has been so tight that trucks have at times hauled water in to keep the taps from running dry.

But this year, the Trump administration determined that the Tremont area — already creaking under the weight of its roughly 2,000 residents — could support one of its new mega immigrant detention centers, larger than any currently in operation.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security bought, without public notice, a vacant warehouse two miles down Tremont’s main street to house up to 7,500 detainees. With the site tentatively scheduled to open within the year, residents have been left to wonder how their area will sustain a captive population nearly four times its size, plus an accompanying work force.

“We don’t need that,” said Tom Pribilla, who has run a hardware store in Tremont for decades. “The community, the area, is not going to be able to absorb the costs

The Tremont warehouse is one of about a dozen that D.H.S. has purchased nationwide, all in an effort to build enough immigrant detention centers to support President Trump’s mass deportation pipeline. Another planned processing center, in Berks County, Pa., just 30 minutes from Tremont, would hold up to 1,500 additional people.

Across the country, the plans to convert warehouses into detention spaces have been met with fierce local blowback, even in deep-red areas, like Tremont, that have backed Mr. Trump. Recently, D.H.S. abandoned plans to purchase warehouses in places like Tennessee and Mississippi.

The Tremont project has become more muddled as D.H.S., under its new secretary, Markwayne Mullin, reviews the entire nationwide plan. But it has also maintained that it is still moving ahead with the warehouses it has acquired, as D.H.S. grapples with a shortage of detention space and an increase in apprehensions.

Whatever the outcome, the backlash in Tremont shows how the push to expand detention space is bringing the repercussions of the president’s mass deportation campaign to some of his typical strongholds. In Schuylkill County, Pa., (pronounced SKOOK-ul) which contains Tremont, more than 70 percent of the vote went to Mr. Trump in 2024, helpin g tip the scales in a critical swing state. (Continued)