County votes to end housing detainees

Middlesex County freeholders voted unanimously to end an agreement to house federal immigrant detainees on Oct. 1, avoiding entering a controversial program called 287(g).
In a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the county received $4 million to $6 million per year for holding federal detainees in Middlesex County prisons since 2001, said Brian Fenyak, business manager for the Department of Corrections and Youth Services.
But freeholders voted to end the arrangement because of talk that they would have to enter a 287(g) program, which they opposed because of the financial and liability stipulations, Freeholder Mildred Scott said.
According to a written statement from Scott, in a 287(g) agreement, the federal government would not pay the officers’ salaries while they were out of state completing training to act as ICE agents, nor would the federal government pay for any overtime necessary in these officers’ absence.
Furthermore, officers would be under the direct supervision of the federal government after they were trained to perform ICE duties, which would cause a significant increase in the county’s overtime and staffing requirements, she said in the statement.
“The county opens itself up to a liability risk while these officers are performing the federal government’s work,” Scott said. “Again, the federal government will not cover these potential liability costs.”
The 287(g) program is a provision that allows local law enforcement officers to make arrests on immigration charges, a responsibility normally under the authority of ICE, said Amy Gottlieb, program director of the Immigrant Rights Program of the American Friends Service Committee.
“In practice, it ends up putting too much power in the hands of local police and leads to racial profiling, where they can stop people on pretext and arrest on immigration,” she said. “[287(g)] creates division between members of immigrant communities and their local police department.”
The Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights supported the freeholders’ decision because they believe that deputizing local officers as ICE agents under 287(g) would undermine public safety and lead to increased civil rights violations for people who have committed minor infractions, according to a MCCIR press release.
“The ICE detention system is so vast that it is not being effectively overseen,” said the Coalition’s Co-Founder Karina Wilkinson.
The coalition was formed in March 2008 after a 72-year-old detainee, Arturo Suarez-Almenares, died at a North Brunswick jail, Wilkinson said.
According to the Home News Tribune, 93 detainees signed a petition to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, complaining about a lack of medical treatment given to Suarez-Almenares when he was afflicted with a heart attack.
Middlesex County officials disagree.
“The inmate was given complete professional care,” Fenyak said. “The county has a fully staffed, professional medical facility that attended to this inmate — and every inmate’s every need. We take that very seriously.”
All federal detainees were removed from Middlesex County jails in the days following the freeholders’ decision and were re-located by ICE, Fenyak said.
“I think it’s a positive decision because we’ve heard so many complaints from Middlesex County jails,” Gottlieb said. “But it’s only a band-aid. We want to see broader change across the whole system.”