The view of 3501 Mountain Road in Upper Bern Township, where the Trump administration paid $87.4 million for a warehouse in Berks County that ICE wants to use as a detention facility.
Forget, for the moment, the notion of the Department of Homeland Security literally planning to “warehouse” humans — buy warehouses and convert them into immigration detention centers in various states, including Pennsylvania (as reported in a Spotlight PA story in Tuesday’s paper).
Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not. Maybe it can be done well, or maybe it’s a recipe for disaster simply because of the speed in pursuing such an unusual proposition. That’s not what this editorial is about.
Also, forget the concern about the potential for intense use of water, sewage, and electricity that such detention centers can cause for those who live nearby. It seems an important consideration, very similar to concerns being voiced locally and nationwide about data centers springing up everywhere. But again, the good or the bad of that is not the issue we want to address.
And we’ll even ignore the “not in my back yard” nature of such facilities. It certainly seems that residents and municipal governments anywhere near such a proposed conversion should have a great deal of say in whether it becomes a reality. Yet according to the Spotlight article, they are apparently being left very much out of the loop, thanks to a variation on the “declare an emergency” gambit that the Trump administration has ardently embraced for many issues.
Let’s assume there really is an emergency that requires the quick purchase and conversion of warehouses into detention centers. Let’s assume all questions regarding local and regional impacts on water, sewer, electricity, and safety will be adequately addressed. Let’s assume the cost of such a conversion —warehouses typically do not have many bathrooms, and usually have many garage bay doors — can be readily justified to the satisfaction of most.
We still see a very real problem exposed by the Spotlight investigation. It’s a problem this region is excruciatingly familiar with: Bypassing usual, built-in government requirements for awarding contracts. The rules are designed to assure two things: 1) that cronies and relatives don’t get the contracts while politicians line their pockets with kickbacks or other deals, and 2) that the best contractor with the best price gets the work.
The system is very far from perfect, but the safeguards matter, and we don’t have to look far for examples of abuse.
Take the “Kids for Cash” scandal that gave Luzerne County a national — even global — notoriety. Two county judges pushed to fast-track the construction of a private juvenile detention center, then pushed children into it, all while getting huge chunks of money from the people behind the project. They claimed an emergency required the closure of the existing county-run facility. They masked their connection to the new center.
Both judges ended up in jail, one through a plea deal and the other through a federal conviction. The state dramatically revamped rules regarding the treatment of juveniles in court. Thousands of Luzerne County Juvenile Court rulings were vacated and records expunged.
That is the kind of thing that can happen when a handful of powerful people in government short-circuit safeguards in favor of secretive, no-bid contracts and closed-door deals in the name of an “emergency.”
So, with that history in mind, it begs the question: why do federal contracts for these projects not follow the same open process when awarding contracts? Why is only a pre-approved list of vendors under consideration for contracts related to these facilities? And, maybe most importantly, how do we know everything is above board if there isn’t an open, transparent process related to these facilities’ contracts?
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