Newly confirmed Department for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is running into a buzzsaw since leaving the Senate and ground zero for him is in a tiny town in Pennsylvania where Donald Trump is massively popular. According to the New York Times, Tremont, Pennsylvania — a deep-red town of just 2,000 people in Trump territory where the president won 70 percent of the vote — is mounting fierce resistance to a proposed 7,500-person DHS detention facility that would dwarf the entire community. “Across the country, the plans to convert warehouses into detention spaces have been met with fierce local blowback, even in deep-red areas, like Tremont, that have backed Mr. Trump,” the Times is reporting.
The rebellion is coming from Trump’s own supporters. Republican Mayor Justin Moeller estimates that 60 percent of his constituents oppose the facility. Former Mayor Roger Adams, now on the borough council, rejected the federal government’s take-it-or-leave-it approach: “Don’t just throw it in our backyard and say, ‘This is where it is, now you got to deal with it.’ That’s not the way I do business.” The concerns are fundamentally local, not ideological. Residents worry about overwhelming water, sewer, healthcare, and emergency response systems. They fear losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost property tax revenue — money that would normally fund schools and municipal services. The federal government pays no local property taxes. Though the warehouse was previously unused, the owner was still contributing to the tax base. A detention center would change that calculus entirely. Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) has vowed to weaponize state authority against the project. “Every tool at my disposal” will be used to stop it, including withholding essential permits if DHS doesn’t comply with state environmental laws, Shapiro declared at a February news conference. Notably, local Republican leaders are taking a convenient neutral stance, letting Shapiro do the heavy lifting while privately sharing the same reservations. “If the governor thinks he can stop it, that’s on the governor’s level,” said Larry Padora, a Republican county commissioner. “My job is to make sure that if this facility comes here, that my residents and my taxpayers aren’t left holding the bag.” DHS under Mullin has provided virtually no detailed planning. Despite state demands for information about water supply, healthcare, and sewage systems for 7,500 detainees, the agency has released almost nothing — leaving the community guessing about the facility’s actual impact.
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