Pa. county jails earn millions of dollars detaining immigrants for ICE

> **Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Pike** Counties collectively charged more than $21 million for detention in 2024 and 2025, invoices obtained by Spotlight PA show. A fifth county, **Cambria**, has a similar detention arrangement, according to federal records and a county official — but denied Spotlight PA’s September 2025 request seeking payment information because ICE did not start sending detainees to its jail until later in the month. relevant counties in bold

Turning human beings into a revenue stream always ends well, right? If counties are raking in ICE money, local reporters should start FOIA-ing contracts and budgets and putting every line item online.

The counties can’t do anything about it? Bullshit. They don’t WANT to do anything about it.

Of course it's all a grift

You've seen the stories of people arrested at the border, loaded onto a plane, and held on the other side of the country? The company operating the flight gets paid, and the facility on the other coast gets paid enough to offer a headhunting kickback.

Once they're done with immigrants, those warehouses, or concentration camps, will not be torn down.

The OG american dream, earning a lot treating minorities as goods

Bet they are also putting in for overtime.

Sooo, just for reference for anyone that didn't read the article; Five counties listed: Pike, Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Cambria. Of the more than $21 million billed... $16 million was from Pike county *alone*, $4.6 was from Clinton. Half a mil from Erie. Franklin billed... $14k.

While these agreements predate the second Trump administration by years or even decades, they are receiving new attention as the president executes a mass deportation campaign that relies heavily on local partners.

America where you'd rather pay millions to detain people than thousands to tolerate them

We're back in the human trafficking and slave trade era

Do better PA. These are the assholes that murdered Rene Good and Alex Pretti.

Who said, "I want this, and not healthcare. "

It's all about making money off people's suffering.

Must have learned jack shit from the Kids for Cash scandal

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s a conspiring the traditional sense but…

This is because we have the worst senators in PA history. McCormick is a rubber-stamp do-nothing finance-bro that's riding the wave and stuffing his pockets. Fetterman was supposed to be progressive, but changed his mind and is right there with all of the right wingers when he's not just slumped in a corner. I have no idea how these guys sit at the dinner table each night and tell their wives / children "I defended a pedophile rapist today" EDIT: Before someone argues that Santorum was worse and points to the definition his name has become. Let me say - he had a position. Sure.....it was grounded on religious fanaticism and a deep love for sweater vests, but it wasn't just self-serving, "whatever keeps me in this job and getting stock-tips".

What’s this supposed to tell me, that fascism has a silver lining? That we didn’t learn a thing from Kids For Cash?

Was the indentured servitude not enough of a revenue stream for them?

Warehouse fire? Oh, wrong post…

For a small piece of paper it carries a lot of weight.

Human trafficking pays well, from what I hear. I guess child trafficking must as well, since it was enough to earn Trump the Presidency. I can see why there would be cooperation. My sympathies to the victims, especially the ones that people who would participate in such evil end up keeping for themselves.

Where tf is PA gonna turn for help huh? Local Pennsylvanian here who’s been to the meetings, all these “representatives” and commissioners and senators are all grifters and con artists and slavers it’s disgusting to even live near them

You can just smell the slavery in the near future.

PA is a shithole country