It should be easier to find out about ICE detentions in Berks County

by Steve Reinbrecht

A young man told me that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers grabbed a friend of his off the street in Reading on Monday and took him to a facility in York.

My friend knows his two brothers as well. The detainee, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, has a baby born here, and has no criminal history, according to my source.

I could not find him on the ICE “detainee tracker” website.

I sent an e-mail to ICE spokesman Adrian Smith, providing the details – the detainee's name, his country and when and where he was nabbed.

Smith called me Thursday. He helped me confirm that I was looking at the proper tracking page. But he said he could not provide information about the incident I was asking about.

He said to make sure I had the proper spelling for the man’s name.

I asked, what if an ICE agent had entered it improperly?

I told him it’s very important for the public to be able to quickly find out about anybody detained or arrested by the government, at any level.

We don’t want people disappearing. That would have been laughable to consider a couple of years ago, but anything seems possible now.

Smith told me he would check and call me back. I didn’t here back by Thursday night.

I also requested, under the federal Freedom of Information Act, a list of everybody ICE has detained in Berks so far.

On the phone, he said he couldn’t give that to me. I hope he sends me a more-formal response to my formal request. 

I find the whole method of getting public information from a government agency shockingly difficult.

I think Smith is trying to do his job within its restraints – he always calls me in response to my queries, in just that doing way more than many public servants have for me on this issue of recent federal immigration activities in Berks [District Attorney John Adams, Reading Mayor Wally Scott, Reading Police Chief Andres Dominguez Jr., and City Council President Jeff Waltman haven't got back to me, if my calls and e-mails are reaching them.]