| WHERE YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE GOING
From our nation’s capital to small-town PA, taxpayers are footing a hefty bill for the chaos that ICE is creating.
Starting tomorrow, the agencies within the Department of Homeland Security will either shut down or work without pay until Congress passes DHS’ budget. TSA, FEMA, and cybersecurity experts will work without pay.
But not ICE. ICE received an eyewatering $85 BILLION in funding last year, $75 billion more than the usual budget from past years. For comparison, the entire Justice Department budget, home of the FBI, is $35 billion.
ICE also received $45 billion to build detention centers with the capacity to detain 100,000 people. ICE plans to open 23 more centers to detain children and families in 18 states. Two of those centers will open in Pennsylvania at a cost of $207 million. Once in the government’s hands, these two large properties become exempt from all local property taxes, including those that fund local public schools in the Pine Grove Area and Hamburg School Districts.
The detention facility in Pine Grove is expected to house 7,500 detainees at the expense of the 1,740 students attending Pine Grove Area School District in Schuylkill County. In Pine Grove is already underfunded by the state by $2.5 million and it will lose more than a half million in property tax revenue because of the ICE sale, a whopping 3.8% total loss of funds for the schools.
Hamburg School District in Berks County educates 2,129 students who will lose out to make way for 1,500 detainees. The school district will lose more than a half million in property tax dollars, 1.7% of district’s funds.
Filling those financial holes in these districts is going to be a major burden on local taxpayers; if they don’t raise taxes to close the gap, cuts to the school district are certain.
Senator Fetterman, an outspoken advocate of the President’s immigrant roundup, went on record to derail the opening two new detention centers in PA. “Neither Tremont Twp. nor Upper Bern Twp. currently have the capacity to meet these demands. In the case of Tremont Twp. specifically, local officials have said that the proposed 7,500-bed detention facility would quadruple the existing burden on their public infrastructure system.”
It’s horrible that ICE is locking up thousands of children in detention centers, including kids in PA. Now, thousands more children in the Commonwealth will feel the impact of ICE’s expansion when it cuts of the quality of their education and their families face higher tax bills. Bringing ICE to local communities is just never good for kids.
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