Essex County, New Jersey, is ending its long-standing and controversial detention of immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, pledging Wednesday to move detainees out of its correctional facility in Newark by the end of August and resolving what had become a political vulnerability for the all-Democratic county board of commissioners.
The county collects $117 a day per detainee from ICE, and the funds are used to bolster the county budget and control property taxes. The county said it will make up for the millions of dollars in lost in ICE revenue by housing criminally charged inmates from neighboring Union County, through a shared services agreement with that county’s board of commissioners that is expected to bring in $11.3 million a year..
As Essex’s population of undocumented immigrants increased under the Trump Administration, so did revenue -- and scrutiny. Detainees staged hunger strikes inside the facility as they complained of deplorable conditions -- inedible food, poor medical care, officer assaults, and the spread of COVID-19. And activists made passionate pleas at county meetings and protests, leading to arrests.
County officials largely defended the contract, saying they treated detainees well and kept them close to their families by housing them in Newark. Most detainees at the jail lived in New Jersey before they were arrested by ICE and were put into deportation proceedings for lacking legal documents.
Many detainees at Essex are also Green Card holders who were transferred to the facility after serving time in prison for unrelated criminal offenses, which triggered orders of deportation. Other ICE detainees are undocumented immigrants who haven’t been charged or convicted of crimes. All are held while they fight orders of deportation in court or await travel papers so they can be removed from the country. Some are eligible to be released with electronic ankle monitors, but cannot afford bail.
Progressive activists and others responded to the news Tuesday morning with glee, saying they hoped the two other Democratic counties in the state with ICE contracts -- Hudson and Bergen mostly hold detainees from New York -- would follow suit. In Hudson County, Democrats had vowed to end their ICE contract by 2020, but flipped last year and renewed it for a decade after an agreement to fill the jail with inmates from another county fell through. The Bergen County Sheriff, who is also a Democrat, has likewise refused to end that county’s ICE contract despite detainee hunger strikes and protests outside the jail that turned violent.
In vowing to “depopulate” the ICE population to zero by August 23, Essex is not officially canceling the ICE contract. It will still exist, but will not be exercised, officials said.
In announcing the end of ICE detention, Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo did not take a moral stance against ICE and its aggressive immigration enforcement practices. Instead, he framed the decision as fiscally sound -- the same way he had long defended the contract.
“We have had a very solid working relationship with ICE during the last 13 years,” DiVincenzo said. “It has always been in the best interest of the detainees to remain close to their family, friends, attorneys and community organizations helping them in a facility that was safe and secure. Our [Essex County Correctional Facility] fulfilled this responsibility very well and we thank ICE for their partnership.”
But Essex County Commissioner President Wayne Richardson said commissioners had “heard clearly and consistently from constituents concerned about the ICE contract,” and he “does not condone policies that detain individuals for no reason other than their unauthorized entry into the United States.” To this point, Commissioner Brendan Gill had been the only county elected official to oppose the contract.
Profits from ICE skyrocketed under the Trump Administration, and not just because of former President Trump’s focus on arresting undocumented immigrants regardless of their criminal history. New Jersey had an availability of jail beds due to a bail reform law that led to fewer criminally charged individuals getting locked up while awaiting the disposition of their cases. The ICE contracts in New Jersey counties -- Essex, along with Hudson and Bergen -- allowed Democratic officials to avoid layoffs of corrections officers and staff.
Essex County has taken as much as $3 million in a single month from ICE, though revenue has plummeted since the onset of the pandemic as arrests dropped and detainees were released due to COVID-19 concerns. Before the pandemic the county held about 600 detainees, but the population this week is down to 165 detainees -- about 75% below pre-pandemic levels, according to county data.
Listen to reporter Matt Katz's radio story for WNYC:
A 2019 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general concluded that immigrants at Essex were held in "unsafe and unsanitary conditions." They cited expired and discolored lunch meat, meatballs that smelled like “fecal matter,” and "foul smelling and unrecognizable" hamburger patties. A detainee also found a guard’s gun unattended in a bathroom. County officials said the issues were immediately addressed, and they cited other inspections that gave the jail high marks. Following the inspector general’s report, a food manager was fired.
Later that year county prosecutors investigated an allegation that guards beat and sexually assaulted two ICE detainees in the showers, where there aren’t cameras. No charges were filed and the allegations were deemed meritless, but internal reports about the clash between detainees and officers that precipitated the alleged assault revealed a chaotic environment: An officer’s bulletproof vest was stripped off and briefly misplaced, handcuffs were lost, and pepper spray was deployed.
Other detainees at Essex have also accused corrections officers of abuse. And when detainees told Gothamist/WNYC about substandard medical conditions at the jail, one detainee was allegedly retaliated against by being put into solitary confinement, assaulted by a guard, and subjected to racist and homophobic intra-jail mail.
Recently Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez came out against county arrangements with ICE, with Menendez calling the contracts “blood money.” State Democrats also proposed a law banning ICE detention in the state.
Opposition to Essex’s ICE contract eventually led county officials to make some changes. They created a fund to provide legal assistance for detainees, who do not have a constitutional right to an attorney, and they started a civilian task force to independently review complaints about the facility.
In recent months some New Jersey residents held by ICE were moved from the Essex jail to Bergen County's facility. It is unclear where New Jersey detainees will be detained after August. An ICE spokesman said the agency is reviewing its options, locally and nationally, for relocating the Essex detainees.
Not all activists were happy with today's announcement. The New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice said that while it has long pushed for the termination of the ICE contract, "there is no celebration."
"The choice to end the ICE contract in order to fill beds with people from Union County is a decision where no one wins -- where families will continue to be separated, where abusive conditions and lack of accountability within the jail systems will continue, and where counties will continue to profit off of pain and punishment," the group said in a statement.
