To the Editor:
As a former employee of Pep Boys in Chester, I was horrified to learn that the federal government plans to use this vacant distribution center as an immigrant processing facility. Using warehouse space to hold humans is not only unsafe and impractical, it demonstrates an insidious vision for immigration enforcement.
Anyone who has ever worked in a warehouse knows that climate control measures are often minimal, as they were at Pep Boys, making conditions inside the warehouse during the summer akin to the inside of an aluminum shed on a hot, sunny day. The idea that people could be confined in such an environment by an agency already plagued by reports of mistreatment and neglect is a recipe for human tragedy.
While working at Pep Boys, it became clear to me that some of the hardest working employees were immigrants and first generation Americans. When you consider the likelihood that many of the skilled tradespeople who constructed the building had a similar background, the irony of detaining immigrants in a warehouse that was built with the help of immigrant labor and employed immigrant workers becomes increasingly obscene.
Not far into the future, people will wonder how our government could have proposed a plan that one administration official callously called, “Amazon Prime for humans.” Let it not be said that the people of Orange County were passive witnesses. Regardless of our political affiliations, we must call upon our shared humanity and oppose this potential warehouse of horrors.
Salvatore J. LaBruna
Goshen