Middlesex County Jail Related News

Freeholders vote to end housing immigrant detainees in Middlesex County jail

By Tom Haydon/The Star-Ledger  October 01, 2009, 9:01PM

MIDDLESEX COUNTY -- Middlesex County freeholders will end a lucrative contract to house federal immigrant detainees in the county jail to avoid having corrections officers turned into immigration agents.

Freeholders voted unanimously for a recommendation by Freehold Mildred Scott, who called for the county to end its more than six-year-long agreement with the U.S. Marshal Service to house detainees in the corrections facility in North Brunswick.

Scott said the Marshal Service was insisting the county enter the federal 287 (g) program, which allows municipal and county law enforcement officers to simultaneously work as immigration agents, giving them authority to initiate deportation proceedings against illegal aliens linked to serious crimes.

Joining the program, Scott said, would force the county to incur the costs of paying the officers while they went through out-of-state training.

Also, the county would assume greater liability for the immigration work.

"By taking on the additional responsibility for no additional compensation, as well as the increased liability as called for under the federal government’s 287 (g) program, the county would not be acting in the best interest of the Middlesex County residents," Scott said in a statement.

Members of the grassroots Middlesex County Coalition for Immigrant Rights supported the freeholders decision.

Karina Wilkinson, co-founder of the coalition, said entering the 287(g) program "would have led to civil rights violations."

Wilkinson said the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now has the capacity to detain for more than 33,000 immigrants nationwide,

"There’s too many detention facilities for ICE to know what is going on," Wilkinson said.

Activists became concerned about the housing of detainees at the jail after one detainee, 72-year-old Arturo Suarez-Almeres died on March 2, 2008.

Suarez-Almeres, of Cuba, had been in the county facility in North Brunswick, awaiting deportation after several drug-dealing convictions.

His death sparked allegations of neglect. However, freeholders maintained that Suarez-Almeres had received proper medical care during his detention and died of natural causes.

They said Suarez-Almeres had received treatment for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and emphysema at the county corrections facility. On Feb. 28, an electrocardiogram administered to Suarez-Almeres showed abnormalities that led officials to take him to St. Peter’s Medical Center in New Brunswick. He died at the hospital.

In 2008 the county jail held an average 250 to 280 detainees a day. The county’s contract with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement generated more than $6 million in revenue in 2007, officials said.

However, the number of detainees dropped to about 160 daily this year, county officials said. County Administrator John Pulomena said there are about 45 detainees currently the jail, and those people should be moved by next week.

Only two government agencies in New Jersey -- Monmouth County and Morristown -- have federal approval to start 287 (g) programs, but neither of those programs has been implemented, federal officials said.

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