Activists want Middlesex County to stop holding immigrant detainees in jail (Scarlett Scuttlebutt)

Activists want Middlesex County to stop holding immigrant detainees in jail

By GENE RACZ • Staff Writer • October 18, 2008

MIDDLESEX COUNTY —Activists call it unconstitutional. County officials say they are simply carrying out federal law.

A battle is raging over the hot-button issue of immigrant detention at the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in North Brunswick.

During last week's freeholder meeting, protesters from the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee held a candlelight vigil on Bayard Street, urging the county government to end its contract with the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement.

On any given day, upwards of 180 immigrant detainees are held at the county jail which receives $100 a day per detainee from ICE. That deal translated into $6.17 million in revenue for the county's 2008 operating budget.

The U.S. government says the detentions are part of its stepped-up efforts to remove criminal and other deportable aliens from American society. Critics of the detentions contend that ICE has done an end-run around the Bill fo Rights by creating a new category of "administration detention" — a parallel process from the traditional criminal justice system.

"Our feeling is, this contract is not going to be terminated based on the good will of any individual freeholder," said Jeannette Gabriel, one of the founding members of the NJCRDC. "It's only going to be terminated on the basis of community pressure, because we're talking about $6.17 million dollars. So it's not possible.

"We urge the freeholders to break with the unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration and terminate the detention contract," added Gabriel. "If we allow the constitutional rights of detainees to be taken away, we're undermining the constitutional rights of every single person in our society."

Last week's vigil saw several protesters and members of the NJCRDC don orange, prisoner-like jumpsuits for added effect. Some stood in silent protest at the back of the freeholders' meeting room for the duration of the session. There, they held placards with the names of various immigrant detainees at the county jail they had received from a mass petition decrying conditions there.

The NJCRDC has been holding rallies and speaking out against immigrant detention at the county jail at numerous freeholders' meeting since the spring.

The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reforms and Immigrant Responsibility Act set up a sweeping mandatory detention for those facing deportation proceedings and sharply reduced the use of parole which had been routine. By re-naming imprisonment of immigrant detainees "administrative detention," critics of the law say it limits due process rights which prohibits people from being held indefinitely without criminal charges.

More specifically, the Act allows the executive branch of the government to detain, and deport if it can, people for immigration violations. The Act allowed for minor offenses to act as triggers to the deportation process. When passed, the Act was also retroactively applied to all those illegal immigrants who had once been convicted of "deportable offenses" — regardless of whether those convicted had already served their time. Prior to the Act, deportable offense were those which carried penalties of substantial jail time.

Now, misdemeanors and offenses as minor as turnstile jumping are classified as "aggravated felonies" to trigger deportation.

"If they have an objection to the federal policy, then challenging our contract based upon their objection to the federal policy is really directing it to the wrong place," said County Counsel Thomas Kelso. "However, in fairness to them, what they're saying is that we are facilitating the policy by entering into a contract to hold these detainees."

Kelso added that if Middlesex County jail did not agree to hold immigrant detainees, some other facility would.

"The county freeholders have made a determination that it is in the best interest of the county to have that contract and the revenues that are generated by it," added Kelso. "It is, in the whole big picture, really not facilitating in any meaningful way this federal policy that they object to.

According to NJCRDC, the government accelerated its immigrant detentions after Sept. 11, 2001 — detentions activists maintain are the same as punishment for crimes. ICE requires that the detainees be kept apart from general prison population and that their detentions should not be punitive.

Michael Gilhooly, spokesman for Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE), said he disagrees that immigrant detainees are being denied due process rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution. He contends that the immigrant detainees have several avenues available to them when ordered removed from the U.S.

"The immigration court process is a tried-and-true process, it's been in existence for some time," said Gilhooly. "Judges are independent of ICE, they work for the Department of Justice so they apply an independent review to the case. ICE attorney's, trial attorneys, act as prosecutors on the case. Individuals are allowed to have their own attorneys and they present their cases to the judges and the judges make a ruling."

Gilhooly noted that if immigrant detainees fail to prevail at the initial case, they can appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Then, if they fail there, they can, one, ask for reconsideration of the case by the court; or two, they can go to a district court and ask the district court to hear their appeal.

"So, they have multiple levels," Gilhooly added. "If an individual is a mandatory detention person, and they are being detained, then in essence, they control the length of their detention stay to the point they stop appealing or decide to return to their country."

Eric Lerner, member of the NJCRDC, disagrees with Gilhooly's assessment of due process rights available to immigrant detainees — especially in light of the Supreme Court's recent decision which ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

"The Supreme Court just said that you can't just pull a process out of hat and say, "Hey, you've got due process,' " said Lerner. "These (immigrant detainees) are people who are being deprived of their liberty just as much as the Guantanamo detainees. I would not claim in the same conditions. But they are being deprived of their liberty and they they have never been indicted by a grand jury, never had the opportunity to be tried by a jury. They do not have the guaranteed right to counsel, they have to pay for it."

Lerner noted that immigrant detention, or even the threat of it, can be used by employers to suppress labor rights of immigrant workers, further driving down wages for every worker in these tough economic times. Lerner said he also disagrees with Kelso's assertion that shutting down immigrant detention at the Middlesex County jail would have no meaningful affect on the system.

"First of all, anything we do, is going to reduced the number of detainees," said Lerner. "Second of all, we hope that enough of these sparks will set off a chain reaction in which people say, "We have to go to our counties and shut this down all across the country.'

"I think this is one of the ways the system will be shut down."