From the Jails to the State House: A New Jersey Immigration Update

Essex County made national news this spring when it announced that it would no longer detain immigrants being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at its Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark. Since 2011, the ICE contract has brought in over $200 million dollars to NJ in payments from the federal government.  In fact, federal inmate housing has been one of the largest non-tax sources of revenue for the county. 

But as Trump’s abhorrent immigration policies increased, so did the public outrage over this contract, especially after inspectors found horrific conditions in the jail, including physical and psychological abuse. Immigrants rights groups held regular protests at the facility, while detainees organized hunger strikes within the jail. Advocates and protestors regularly spoke out at County Commissioners (formerly known as Freeholders) meetings, demanding the county terminate the ICE contract.Finally, in late April, County Commissioners announced Essex County will end “its long-standing and controversial detention of immigrants for ICE, pledging to move detainees out of its correctional facility in Newark by the end of August.”

We are happy that the collective pressure over many years has led to this decision - and we want to give a big shout out to many local organizations who have been leading the charge, showing up week in and week out for years, on this advocacy. However, we also want to highlight that this only happened because the county was able to replace the revenue generated from the ICE contract: “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 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.”  It is disheartening that our county continues to feel the need to balance its budget by collecting money through the carceral system which, as we know, disproportionately incarcerates Black and brown people. 

With Essex County’s decision, advocates hope Hudson and Bergen, the two other New Jersey counties with ICE contracts, will follow suit. As reported by Matt Katz on Twitter, momentum is in our favor: Hudson county is looking at kicking ICE out by December; Bergen County is no longer accepting detainees; and the owners of the property housing private-prison company Core Civic, which operates ICE’s Elizabeth Detention Center, are suing to break their lease.

This momentum makes two bills currently going through the New Jersey legislature that much more important: Assembly bill A5207, and its corresponding Senate bill S3361, are legislation written with input from ACLU-NJ, American Friends Services Committee, Freedom for Immigrants and NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice (NJAIJ) which targets getting ICE out of NJ entirely. SOMA Action recently voted to officially endorse this legislation, which will keep ICE from: signing any new detention contracts in New Jersey; expanding any current detention contracts in New Jersey; or renewing any current detention contracts in New Jersey. You can see more on this in this helpful fact sheet from NJAIJ at the end of this article.

ICE put out an RFI back in October 2020, looking for space to house an additional 900 detainees in the New York City area.  Without this legislation other counties in New Jersey or private prison facilities could fill the gap left by Essex, Bergen and Hudson.  

The bills are making their way through the New Jersey legislature. On May 20 the New Jersey Senate Law and Public Safety committee voted to advance S3361; and on June 2, its counterpart in the Senate did the same. It is encouraging that the two committees took a stand to end immigrantion detention, and we now need to call on the state legislature to pass these bills so they can be signed into law by Governor Murphy. 

If you’re interested in getting involved in advocating for this legislation, or want to stay in the know with what the Immigrant Rights Committee has going on, please email us at SOMA.IRC@gmail.com.

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Fact Sheet