DHS drops the Berks County ICE detention center plan

Update, July 7, 2026: This report originally described the facility plan as active and the fight over it as likely to last years. Hours after publication, our review of the county’s June 25 meeting minutes and subsequent press coverage confirmed DHS dropped the plan in late June. The report has been rewritten to reflect that.

The federal government will not open the ICE detention center it planned inside a 520,000-square-foot warehouse in Upper Bern Township. U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser said in late June that the Department of Homeland Security informed his office its enforcement plans “will not include the proposed detention or processing centers in Berks or Schuylkill counties,” and Commissioner Dante Santoni Jr. announced the reversal at the June 25 county commissioners meeting, crediting the governor’s office and the residents who organized against it.

The government still owns the building it paid $87.4 million for in February. What happens to it is now the open question.

How the reversal unfolded

June 18: The New York Times reports, citing an internal DHS document, that seven of eleven facilities the department bought for detention expansion will not move forward, including the Berks and Schuylkill county sites, and that DHS plans to sell them or hand them to other agencies. The department had paid more than $700 million for the seven.
June 25: Santoni shares the news during commissioner comments at the county meeting, thanking the governor’s office and residents. Two public commenters respond to the reversal and press the county about ICE cooperation generally.
June 26: Meuser’s office says DHS, under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, confirmed the plans directly. Sen. John Fetterman issues a statement on the cancellation.
Still pending: Spotlight PA reported in late June that local officials were awaiting formal written answers from the administration about the warehouse’s future.

The five-month fight, briefly

DHS finalized the $87.4 million purchase of the never-occupied warehouse at 3501 Mountain Road on February 2. Township officials said they learned of it after the fact; public reports put the planned capacity at up to 1,500 people; opposition in Berks and Schuylkill counties was bipartisan and loud. In March, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection issued administrative orders barring DHS from occupying the site or connecting water and sewer until it complied with state environmental law, and Gov. Josh Shapiro met with local leaders. Whether the environmental blockade, the politics, or internal federal budgeting killed the plan is not established by the public record; the DHS document reported by the Times did not give site-by-site reasons.

Why Berks reacted the way it did

The county has its own history here: it owned and operated the Berks County Residential Center, a family detention facility that held immigrant families under contract with ICE for two decades until the arrangement ended and the center closed in early 2023. The new proposal revived that fight almost immediately, and the reversal lands as a win for the same coalition. The shuttered county center still appears as a zeroed-out line in the county’s 2026 budget.

What to watch now

The building. A half-million-square-foot federal warehouse with no stated use: sale, transfer to another agency, or something new. Any reuse runs through Upper Bern Township land-use processes this time.
Written confirmation. Local officials have the announcement through a congressman and a commissioner; a formal DHS commitment on paper is what makes it durable.
The DEP orders. Whether they are withdrawn, resolved, or left standing against the property.
The companion site in Tremont, Schuylkill County, which the same reporting says was also dropped.
County ICE-cooperation questions raised in public comment at back-to-back meetings; here is how to raise yours.

We will update this report as the building’s disposition becomes public.