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NJ Democrats Reverse Stance, Reject Residents’ Pleas, And Vote To Continue Jailing NYC Immigrants
By
Matt Katz
Published Nov 25, 2020
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Matt Katz / WNYC
By
Matt Katz
Published Nov 25, 2020
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Democratic officials in Hudson County, NJ, voted Tuesday night to continue to jail immigrants for the federal government, reversing a 2018 plan to phase out the contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and rejecting 10 hours of heated and universal opposition from residents.
More than 150 people dialed into a marathon virtual meeting to speak out against renewing the contract. Nobody spoke in favor over the course of the long hearing, other than the county legislators, known as freeholders, who voted in favor, 6 to 3. They said the county depended on the revenue—$120 per day, per immigrant.
The vote gives county executive Tom DeGise, the Democrat who pushed the plan, something of a blank check to negotiate the terms of a 10-year contract extension. About 100 ICE detainees are currently housed at the county jail, but the facility can hold hundreds more—especially notable since ICE is seeking more bed space in the region.
“Renewing makes you malicious, or complicit— neither offers redemption,” Gary Springarn, a county resident, told the freeholders. “You will carry that weight for the rest of your lives. You failed the great responsibilities that come with your power. Your legacies will fade into obscurity.”
Added opponent Michael Watson, "History will remember you as monsters."
Listen to Matt Katz's report on WNYC:
Through tears and with raised voices, residents spoke of their concerns about both the county jail where the detainees are held (in 2017 and 2018, six inmates died in a nine-month period) and about ICE in general (the caging of children at the border and reports of forced hysterectomies). Former detainees alleged sexual abuse at the Kearny facility. Residents also noted that Hudson County skews heavily Democratic, and is exceptionally diverse—43 % are foreign born.
In 2018, residents, immigration activists, and former detainees protested the county’s continuing effort to detain immigrants for ICE, which has increasingly jailed those without criminal records under the Trump administration. DeGise announced a “path to exit” the contract by the end of 2020, which stemmed the outrage.
That path to exit, county spokesman Jim Kennelly said before Tuesday’s meeting, was “contingent” on filling the jail beds with prisoners from other law enforcement agencies. But a plan to hold inmates for Mercer County, NJ, is held up in court. And while the jail did bring in additional federal and state inmates, he said, it wasn’t enough.
Plus, Kennelly said, given the loss in public revenue due to the pandemic, county taxes would increase too much without the ICE funds. “To simply end this at this moment is going to have a negative effect on this year’s bottom line,” he said.
Kennelly did not provide a financial analysis of how much taxes would be raised if the contract was cancelled. He said total revenue -- not including expenses, like corrections officer salaries—is at least $3.5 million. But at the current ICE rate, that would assume the detainee population actually increases next year under the Biden Administration.
Kennelly said that DeGise, who did not attend the meeting, could terminate the contract at any time if the county finds other ways of securing revenue.
Alina Das, co-director of an immigrant rights clinic at NYU Law, said eliminating the number of prison beds available to ICE would have meant fewer arrests of local immigrants. “Holding open these beds is simply an invitation to ICE to fill up the beds and justify their detention budgets,” she said.
But Hudson County officials have long argued that if the contract was cancelled, the men and women held at the jail would be transferred to distant jails, far from their families and attorneys. Detainees from New York City are eligible for free legal representation, which they could lose if they were sent elsewhere.
“If we opt to end the contract, how is that going to help the individual client to prosecute his case with the immigration authorities?” asked Freeholder Albert Cifelli, who voted for the contract. He said he recently met with detainees at the facility who were “fearful” and “anxious” about where they would go if the jail closed.
While Kennelly claimed that privately, immigration attorneys told county administrators that they want to keep the contract, publicly attorneys from the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project did not take a position.
One of the attorneys representing immigrants at the jail, Sophia Gurulé, addressed the board as a representative of her legal aid attorneys’ union. She said her clients complained of being locked in their cells for 23 ½ hours a day, “which is solitary confinement and amounts to torture.” She said there are “cells that have feces on the wall,” and “medical care is regularly denied.”
“They have literally starved themselves to get you to pay attention,” Gurulé said, referring to past hunger strikes at the jail. “If someone dies on your watch -- which is truly a genuine concern for the detained people at the jail and which has already happened—their deaths will be on your hands, as well as ICE’s.”
There have been a litany of complaints about the jail itself. In 2017 and 2018, six inmates died over a nine-month period. Between 2014 and 2016, immigrant advocates found that 121 medical grievances were filed by immigrant detainees. In 2017 an inspector for the Department of Homeland Security alleged the jail lacks provisions like soap and toilet paper, and Human Rights First reported a lack of sanitary pads for women, and an instance of a detainee forced to use a bra as a sling for a clavicle fracture. A 2017 ICE inspection report showed 22 deficiencies, including the dangerous use of pepper spray to suppress inmates.
Kennelly, the county spokesman, said over the last two years conditions at the jail had improved, with major investments in mental health services and a new infirmary.
Still, COVID-19 has ravaged the jail, killing five employees and sickening dozens, with federal judges ordering the release of certain ICE detainees to keep them safe. The family of one correction officer who died of COVID alleges the jail lacked PPE.
To that end, opponents compared ICE detention to Holocaust concentration camps. They described detaining immigrants as being contrary to Jesus Christ’s teachings. And Freeholder Bill O’Dea, the leading opponent of the contract, described the efforts against the contract as the new civil rights movement.
“I don’t think when it comes to a civil rights issue that dollars really matter,” he said. “This is a movement. Make no mistake about it. “
Cifelli shot back and said: “That’s not a reasonable analogy!” He said some of the opposition speakers “were just crazy,” but he believed “the vast majority of the people of the country and the state of New Jersey and Hudson County are of the center, and that’s why I was voted into office to represent those people."
Not all of the freeholders seemed to understand that the detained are held for immigration violations, not crimes. Freeholder Caridad Rodriguez, an immigrant from Cuba, framed it as a law-and-order issue. She falsely indicated that immigrants in detention who have not committed major crimes will ultimately be freed and returned to their families. “Safety for me and my family is my priority,” she said.
Before the meeting, DeGise’s office circulated a memo listing crimes that immigrants at the jail committed. That was misleading, though, because detained immigrants aren’t held on crimes—they already have served time for any offenses. Instead, immigrants are detained while awaiting the disposition of their deportation proceedings. Some are transferred from prison after serving out criminal sentences, while others are simply seeking asylum or living without documents.
Opponents complained that the Hudson County freeholders were voting to continue the contract with just a few days’ notice to the public and at 1 p.m. on a workday. That echoed 2018, when freeholders were sued for initially voting to approve a renewal of the contract without public notice, triggering enough public opposition—including testimony from former detainees who spoke of rape and abuse inside the jail -- that it led DeGise and the freeholder board to pledge that the contract would end.
The fact that Hudson Democrats reversed their position is something of an outlier. Due to the high-profile and aggressive approach ICE has taken in enforcing immigration violations during the Trump era, localities around the country have cancelled ICE contracts. But not in New Jersey, where Democratic counties continue to detain immigrants for ICE for financial gain: From January 2015 to March 2018, the amount of ICE money sent to Bergen, Essex, and Hudson Counties increased 46 percent.
These contracts are lucrative, but often politically stressful for local officials. An ongoing hunger strike at the Bergen County Jail is now in its second week -- with nine detainees currently refusing food and demanding release due to their preexisting medical conditions that they say make them more vulnerable to Covid-19. The Bergen County Sheriff’s Office directed questions about the hunger strike to ICE, which said it explains the negative effects of not eating to participants and makes sure facilities keep them under medical observation.
Meanwhile COVID-19 cases are spiking at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Center in New Jersey, a privately run facility where five detainees have tested positive, according to ICE. The owner of the Elizabeth jail is Elberon Development Group, and activists recently targeted Elberon by pressuring institutions that its owners support—Kean University and New Jersey Performing Art Center. As a result Elberon announced over the summer that it would terminate its lease with the private prison company, CoreCivic, that holds detainees there for ICE, but it has not followed through with that pledge. CoreCivic’s contract with ICE doesn’t expire until 2027.
Elected Democrats on the city councils in New York, Hoboken, and Jersey City issued statements in recent days opposing the contracts, and some addressed the freeholder board. “At the end of the day the county and by extension every person living in it is benefiting off the warehousing of human beings -- human beings who have come to this country for a better life for their families,” Jersey City Councilman James Solomon said.
By contrast, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy did not answer an email about his position on the contract. “Nothing to add from the governor’s office at this time,” a Murphy spokesman said.
Correction: A previous version of this story noted that Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez had been contacted for comment, when they were not. This story has been updated.
Matt Katz reports on air at WNYC about immigration, refugees, hate, and national security. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattkatz00.
Tagged
immigration and customs enforcement
new jersey
ICE
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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