Berks County Residential Center
immigrant detention center in Pennsylvania, United States
Berks County Residential Center (BCRC), also known as Berks Family Residential Center and as the Berks County detention center, is a 96-bed immigration detention center in Leesport, Berks County, Pennsylvania, operated by Berks County on contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The center operated as a family detention center from March 2001 to March 2021.
History
In August 1994, Berks County started renting out detention center space at its youth detention center to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the predecessor to ICE, to house juvenile immigration detainees. An article about the subject quoted Theodore Nordmark, assistant director of the INS, noting that the location of the detention center was convenient for him from his Philadelphia office, and suggested the convenient location was one reason for choosing Berks County. The housing of detainees was estimated by the county to be profitable, even after accounting for their education expenses. By May 3, 2000, construction of a new building was planned, and Berks County was in discussions with INS to house families. On March 3, 2001, the Berks County Residential Center opened for use by INS for family immigration detention.
In January 2016, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (PA DHS) issued notice that the licensing of the Berks County Residential Center to operate as a child detention facility is being revoked and will not be renewed. The decision was appealed in February; PA DHS would issue reports of violations to the Berks County Residential Center in the years from 2016 to 2018.
In March 2021, ICE announced that no families were being detained at the Berks County Residential Center, and that the detention center will no longer be used for family detention.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110269605. VIAF identifies the subject as 8088170101385512500007. The Library of Congress control number is no2023125941. Authority coordinates are 40.379, -76.016. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2021, 1994 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Berks County Residential Center” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.