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ice, Immigrant Rights

In a Deep Red PA Town, Locals Vent Over a Planned ICE Detention Center

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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

Tom Pribilla, wearing a grayish sweatshirt, stands in an aisle of a store containing tools and other hardware.
Tom Pribilla, at his hardware store, is one of the residents opposed to the detention center. “We don’t need that,” he said. Credit…Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times
Chris Hippensteel

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.

A two-lane road cuts through a small town, with a tree-covered hill in the background.
The planned facility is a couple miles from Tremont’s main street. Credit…Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times

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)

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Fascism, ice, Immigrant Rights

PA County Jails Earn Millions of Dollars Detaining Immigrants for ICE

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Sister Anne McCarthy with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie looks through her signs protesting President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

By Kate Huangpu and Danielle Ohl

Spotlight PA

April 6, 2026 HARRISBURG — A group of Pennsylvania counties has billed the federal government more than $21 million in recent years to detain immigrants in their jails, a first-of-its-kind review by Spotlight PA has found.

While these agreements predate the second Trump administration by years or even decades, they are receiving new attention as the president executes a mass deportation campaign that relies heavily on local partners.

They also highlight how counties in Pennsylvania already cooperate with ICE and other federal agencies to detain immigrants. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security purchased two Pennsylvania warehouses to turn them into detention centers capable of holding 9,000 people collectively.

In those cases, local and county lawmakers say they were blindsided by the planned facilities, which they have limited power to block. The detention agreements involving jails that Spotlight PA has identified require the backing of elected county leaders, prison oversight boards, or both.

Five county jails have or recently had agreements with federal immigration enforcement agencies to hold people in their jails, sometimes for months, in exchange for significant fees, Spotlight PA found.

Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Pike Counties collectively charged more than $21 million for detention in 2024 and 2025, invoices obtained by Spotlight PA show. A fifth county, Cambria, has a similar detention arrangement, according to federal records and a county official — but denied Spotlight PA’s September 2025 request seeking payment information because ICE did not start sending detainees to its jail until later in the month.

Local government officials in favor of the agreements told Spotlight PA that the revenue generated supports services such as the county jail or general fund expenses.

“You’re always going to have pushback one way or another, but we haven’t really experienced it to this point,” Cambria County Commissioner Scott Hunt told Spotlight PA in early March. “This is a relationship that has gone back many years.

“So I realize that emotions are kind of flared now, but this is something we’ve been a part of for years,” he added, “and I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t continue.”

At least one county leader concerned about ICE’s actions nationally told Spotlight PA the payments have become a crucial source of income that would take careful study and planning to replace.

But at a time when ICE and other federal immigration agencies face scrutiny for aggressive and sometimes deadly tactics during sweeping enforcement operations, Pennsylvanians have pushed back against local government collaboration.

During a February meeting of the Erie County Council, dozens testified for or against the county jail’s contract to hold people for federal immigration agencies.

“We believe that participating in any way in the enhanced enforcement is immoral,” said Sister Anne McCarthy with the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, a monastery that has vocally opposed local cooperation with Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown.

Others at the meeting asked the county council to keep the agreement intact.

Federal agents won’t stop enforcing the law just because Erie County stops holding people, they argued.

Ending the agreement could draw the ire of the president, one speaker speculated. Another suggested ending local detention would increase the number of people being sent to other jails hundreds of miles away.

And multiple speakers asked: What about the money the county stands to lose?

“ICE will find a different location to house their detainees,” said Fred Petrini, a Wesleyville resident and borough council member. “We will just be out a half a million dollars in funds that could help the county with expenses.”

Spotlight PA sent public records requests to more than 30 counties for invoices showing payments in exchange for arresting, detaining, holding, or processing people for ICE. The news organization also reviewed federal detention data. (Continued)

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