ImmigrationNew Jersey's detention center expansion underway
With the growing number of deportations of illegal aliens from the United States, federal officials expect demand for space to rise within coming years; Newark county officials are awaiting approval by federal authorities to upgrade and expand the Essex County Correctional Facility, significantly increasing its detainee capacity. The county’s proposal would provide a less punitive setting for detainees along with improved medical care, amenities, and federal oversight
Newark county officials are awaiting approval by federal authorities to upgrade and expand the Essex County Correctional Facility, significantly increasing its detainee capacity. The county’s proposal would provide a less punitive setting for detainees along with improved medical care, amenities, and federal oversight. The facility’s renovation might prove to be the template for immigration detention centers the federal government intends to create across the country.
2009 marked the first decline of illegal immigrants in the country from an estimated 11.9 million to 11.1 million. Over the last year, lawmakers in at least half a dozen states have proposed bills similar to Arizona’s strict immigration laws, limiting benefits, access to public colleges, and instituting punishments for employers of illegal immigrants. With surging numbers in deportations attributed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Secure Communities, a system that processes aliens using DHS, FBI, and the Department of Justice records, federal officials expect demand for space to rise within coming years.
According to a report by the New York Times, the Newark project will increase the detainee capacity by 60 percent. The expanded center would be able to hold approximately 2,750 immigrants, an increase of 1,750 more than it currently holds.
Costs for the renovations have not been disclosed yet, although the immigration agency said the county would be held responsible to finance the project. The federal government would in turn pay $105 per day for each immigrant held at the facility, an expenditure that on the national scale amounted to $1.77 billion in FY 2010 according to a report published by NYU’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.
The plan to expand the facility might be the Obama administration’s first tangible result of the plan to overhaul the government’s method of detaining lawbreaking immigrants. Reports of abusive treatment, poor living conditions, and deaths from county jails and private detection centers across the nation have spurred the federal government into looking at alternatives.
In a report released last April, the county’s handling of detainees was declared “a complete failure” by three advocacy groups that examined federal detention centers in New Jersey. Detainees were noted to have complained of delays in receiving vital medical care and medicine, insufficient and unsanitary food serving procedures, and a scarcity in pillows, soap, and toilet paper.
Nancy Morawetz, an NYU law professor who heads the Immigrant Rights Clinic said that the proposed improvements for the clinic were “laudable goals,” but remained skeptical about the nation’s system of immigration detainment: “The unnecessary detention of people causes an enormous amount of hardship,” Morawetz said.
In what has been called “a significant milestone,” Karnes County, Texas signed a 600-bed minimum security center to house male detainees into contract last month. Federal officials plan to expand other centers in or near Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco.
Negotiations between federal authorities and Newark county officials are expected to take at least three months.
