ICE Sweeps in After NJ COVID Prison Release
By: Hank Kalet
Tags: Covid 19, Immigration, Criminal Justice

ICE Sweeps in After NJ COVID Prison Release

Originally posted to my Patreon and Substack pages.

Nearly 100 New Jersey inmates were released into federal immigration custody during a release that was supposed to be part a humanitarian prison amnesty program designed to stop the spread of COVID-19 in state prisons.

The release, reported by NJ.com and also relayed to me by advocates for the state’s immigrant communities, has further damaged the relationship between the immigrant community and government officials, with many immigrants fearing they could be picked up by immigration enforcement or be turned over to federal authorities just for shopping at the local Walmart or getting a COVID test.

The Rev. Bolivar Flores

The Rev. Bolivar Flores, vice president of the New Jersey Coalition of Latino Pastors and Ministers, was closed to tears as he recounted a call from a member of his church, Ministerio El Sol Sale Para Todas Internacional in Jersey City.

“I received a call from a mother who have two children, 4 and 3 years old, say that she doesn’t have no more milk, and she’s scared to go to the Walmart, to get for a child who is hungry milk, because she see where she lives and that her husband may be arrested,” Flores said.

Flores said most undocumented residents pay taxes to the state and federal government through a tax identification number, and that they do so happily and willingly because they want to be part of the community.

“But now people don’t want to go to do COVID testing, because they don’t trust our state,” he said. “They see this and say, ‘I don’t want to go to have COVID testing. I don’t have green card. When he asks me (for it), he can do what happened with my brother who just got out from jail.”

His story reminded me of the fears expressed by immigrants I interviewed in New Brunswick in 2016, during the final year of the Obama administration when immigration agencies engaged in a surge of enforcement and detention. What’s different this time is that the enforcement action took advantage of a humanitarian effort by the state, which released more than 2,000 inmates from state prison Nov. 5. The program, created by the state Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy, was meant “to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in corrections facilities.” The program, as NJ Spotlight reports, was coordinated with local and county officials.

According to NJ.com, 95 immigrant inmates were “released ahead of schedule Wednesday” and “were picked up by federal immigration officers.” Advocates for immigrants said the inmates were green card holders, which means they were authorized to be in the United States, but that their status was contingent on their not committing criminal offenses.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office of Enforcement and Removal Operations said in an email that 88 inmates (yes, there is a discrepancy) were detained by ICE on ICE detainers. (The same email was sent to NJ.com, apparently.) They were “violent offenders or have convictions for serious crimes such as homicide, Aggravated Assault, drug trafficking and child sexual exploitation. Some were placed in removal proceedings and housed in ICE facilities outside of NJ, while others were detained locally pending execution of their final orders of removal.”

ICE said that 53 were sent to Texas, one to upstate New York, and 32 were detained in ICE custody in New Jersey at one of four facilities that hold immigrant detainees. Two “were released under an Order of Supervision in NJ based on case specific circumstances,” the email said.

Advocates dispute ICE’s characterization of the those detained, pointing to the law’s language. The legislation signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy in October (S2519) specifically prohibits early release of inmates serving sentences for murder, aggravated assault, or “conduct … characterized by a pattern of repetitive, compulsive behavior.”

And they found the actions heartless. Activists tell me families were waiting outside state prisons for their family members, when ICE swooped in and whisked them away.

“To watch children waiting for their parents, and can you just imagine that their parents had just walked out, and now to see them be imprisoned,” Flores tells me, “this is a perverse and diabolical act.”

The federal effort is consistent with a decades-long punitive approach to immigration that has forced too many in the immigrant community to remain in the shadows rather than come forward and participate fully in the communities in which they live. This creates a dangerous atmosphere. Many fear contacting police to report crimes, fear getting medical help, fear even the smallest of interactions with government agencies. The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated these fears, which predate Donald Trump and likely will continue after Trump has left office.

What is different is not the deportations — Obama set a record for that — but the broader narrative around immigrants and the aggressive way in which Trump’s immigration agencies have been deployed as shock troops has heightened the danger for immigrant communities. Trump and his Homeland Security secretaries have used hardline anti-immigration rhetoric at every turn, including portraying all immigrant detainees as dangerous criminals.

There also is a retributive component, say many activists, with the Trump administration through ICE and the Border Patrol ramping up enforcement in Democratic communities and states as revenge for those areas not supporting the administration’s punitive policies.

“I see, in the middle of the campaign, that our state is a Democratic state, that we want to take this guy from the White House, and this is the reparation that we have, the reaction from the White House,” Flores said. I think so our elected official of the federal level.

What happened in New Jersey is consistent with the separation of children from their families at the border, with the criminalization of humanitarian aid at the border, with the expanded use of ICE and the BPS far from the border, with the rounding up of immigrants when they appear at local and regional courts, and the efforts to defund sanctuary cities and invade sanctuary churches to root out refugees and unauthorized immigrants.

The immigration system is broken and has been for decades. It needs a complete makeover that recognizes the damage American foreign interference has done in Central and South America, the creation of failed states tied to our aggressive anti-communist efforts dating back the 1950s, and the ravaging of the environment by rich countries. The uncertainty and chaos, especially in the Northern Triangle in Central America, are on our hands. We can’t pretend otherwise. Any reformation of our immigration system has to recognize this.

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