ICE moved 65 detained immigrants from Orange County jail to Mississippi and Buffalo

More than half of the immigration detainees being held in the Orange County Correctional Facility while awaiting deportation proceedings have been moved to distant facilities in Mississippi and near Buffalo because of short staffing at the county jail in Goshen.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that has contracted with the county since 2008 to board detainees, picked up 65 detainees around July 25 and transferred 61 of them to the Adams County Jail in Natchez, Mississippi, ICE spokesman Emilio Dabul said. The other four detainees were moved to the Buffalo Service Processing Center, a federal detention site.

The transfers left the Orange County Correctional Facility with about 58 ICE detainees - 56 men and two women - remaining in its cells as of Monday, Undersheriff Ken Jones said. That marked a sharp reduction in a detainee population that had averaged around 120 as of March and has climbed as high as a daily average of 174 in 2018.

The 778-cell jail has been a focus of attention for immigrant advocacy groups as the only county jail left in the New York City area that holds ICE detainees since three New Jersey counties canceled their ICE contracts last year. A coalition of those groups had sent a 19-page complaint to federal authorities in February about conditions at the Orange County Correctional Facility, backed by statements from 10 detainees.

Complaints:Immigration detainees blast conditions at Orange County jail

Images:See inside an Orange County Correctional Facility unit where ICE detainees are held

Advocates, who had argued then for the detainees held in Goshen to be released, had fresh cause for alarm after learning that dozens had instead been moved to distant facilities. "Transferring immigrants in detention far away from their families, support networks, and attorneys with no transparency or opportunity for release violates the rights and dignity of our immigrant community members," Drea Herrera, senior organizer at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement last week.

Dabul said ICE routinely moves detainees "based on available space and resources" and does so in "a safe and humane manner" with attention to their medical needs. Detainees are given a list of free legal services and resources and phone access to free legal representation through an American Bar Association program, he said.

Groups that advocate for immigration detainees and had argued for their release condemned the mass transfer of detainees to distant locations.

Jones said the county asked ICE for fewer detainees largely because of severe staffing shortage at the jail, which he said had 29 vacant positions and about 17 correction officers out on extended leaves due to injuries and illnesses unrelated to their work. Those vacancies and absences have been exacerbated by workers using vacation time in the summer, and had forced the jail to require officers to work double shifts, sometimes two or three times a week.

"We were trying to clear pods so we could reduce strain on the existing workforce," Jones said.

He said the jail had now limited its ICE detainee population to one 56-bed pod for men and up to two dozen women to be housed with other female inmates. The jail could later raise that limit once staffing rebounds, although that may take a while. About 10 new correction officers are expected to be hired after low turnout for the most recent qualifying test for those positions, Jones said.

But he stressed that the reduction in ICE detainees didn't signify a future retreat from Orange County's longstanding arrangement with the federal agency.

"We're not terminating the contract, we're not getting out of the ICE business," he said.

The complaints about jail conditions earlier this year included allegations of barely edible food, indifferent medical care and frequent use of solitary confinement as punishment for trivial offenses. Jones had responded then that the detainees' accounts were largely untrue or exaggerated or else pertained to appropriate disciplinary actions taken against detainees who broke rules.

The county has relied on a steady stream of ICE revenue to bolster its budget for almost 14 years. It had anticipated collecting about $6 million this year based on an average population of 120 but will get less with the recent reduction in detainees. The county had reaped almost $8.7 million from ICE in 2018.

In New Jersey, Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties all ended their ICE contracts last year. That left the Orange County Correctional Facility and a privately owned facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the only remaining ICE detention centers in the New York City area.

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.

This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: ICE moved 65 detainees from Orange County jail to Mississippi, Buffalo