Disappeared in Berks: A Community Stands Up for Its Neighbors
We want ICE completely out of Berks, root and branch — we want a county where all of our neighbors, regardless of status, can live without fear of state-sanctioned violence. Communities across the country are already winning this fight. We can too.
On April 25, 2026 — the National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention — Berks residents gathered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Reading, Pennsylvania for Disappeared in Berks, a vigil and town hall honoring 75 immigrants discharged by the Berks County Jail directly to ICE between March 2025 and March 2026.
Seventy-five pairs of empty shoes lined the altar and steps of the church. Work boots and sneakers, sandals and dress shoes. Each pair belonging to someone who woke up one morning in Berks County and was gone by nightfall — a neighbor, a coworker, a parent, a spouse. The shoes said what statistics cannot: these are real people, with real families, and real lives that have been torn apart.
Among the disappeared was a man from Bern Township, whose wife wrote a letter to Governor Shapiro: was read aloud at the vigil. She wrote: “What hurts most is not the financial strain. It’s the silence left by his absence.” Their story is heartbreaking and sadly familiar — and you can read the full letter on our website. What matters is that his shoes were one of 75.
ICE Is Already Here
Much of the public conversation has focused on the proposed 1,500-bed warehouse prison camp in Upper Bern Township and a larger facility planned for Tremont. Those fights are urgent and real. But the warehouses are not the beginning of the story — they are an escalation of something already happening, every single day, in our neighborhoods.
Berks residents are being picked up in collateral arrests at workplaces, at traffic stops, and in compliance traps. People are afraid to drive to work, to take their kids to school, to seek medical care. Alyssa Kane of Aldea PJC, which provides low-cost legal services to immigrants, said she has never seen so many community members so consumed by fear that they are choosing to leave the country altogether — not because they were deported, but because they no longer feel safe here.
And our own county jail is part of the problem. The Berks County Jail has voluntarily discharged 75 people directly to ICE in just one year. As activist Jane Palmer noted, that number doesn’t even count the people taken by other means. “We don’t know what happens to them,” she said.
If the proposed warehouse prison camps are built, it will get dramatically worse. Research shows that ICE arrest rates increase 6.4 times when a detention facility comes to a community. The number 75 will become unrecognizable, just a drop in the bucket.
We Are BOW — and We’re Fighting Back
This event was organized by BOW (the Berks Organizing Workgroup), which is the political action team within BURN (the Berks Urgent Response Network). BURN is a coalition of local organizations and volunteers united around Rapid Response, Community Education, and Mutual Aid, supporting affected families with food, transportation, and compassion. BOW is building political power one relationship at a time: showing up at County Prison Board and Commissioner meetings, training volunteers in organizing, and holding decision makers accountable at every level of government.
We want ICE completely out of Berks, root and branch — we want a county where all of our neighbors, regardless of status, can live without fear of state-sanctioned violence. Communities across the country are already winning this fight. We can too. The shoes on those church steps are waiting for the people who once wore them to come home.
Rev. Stephen Ohnsman, pastor at Calvary United Church of Christ, 640 Centre Ave., speaks during a Disappeared in Berks rally and town hall meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the 400 block of Franklin Street on Saturday, April 25, 2026. Seventy-five pairs of shoes represent those taken by ICE in Berks County. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Dalai Zambrano Galvis reads in Spanish a letter from Gladis Garzon of Bern Township to Gov. Josh Shapiro advocating for the release of her husband, Carlos Gonzalo Zhunio, from ICE detention during a Disappeared in Berks rally and town hall meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the 400 block of Franklin Street on Saturday, April 25, 2026. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Berks County Commissioner Dante Santoni speaks during a Disappeared in Berks rally and town hall meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the 400 block of Franklin Street on Saturday, April 25, 2026. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
State Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz speaks during a Disappeared in Berks rally and town hall meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the 400 block of Franklin Street on Saturday, April 25, 2026. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Participants enter a Disappeared in Berks rally and town hall meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the 400 block of Franklin Street on Saturday, April 25, 2026. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
