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Controversy surrounds detainees
Sunday, January 15, 2006

By SAMANTHA HENRY
HERALD NEWS


PATERSON - Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale has called them rapists, murderers and drug peddlers.

Advocates counter that they are not hardened criminals, but people who have already served time for any crimes committed, and some of whom have lived in the United States long enough to raise a generation of American-born children.

Who exactly are the federal immigration detainees at the Passaic County Jail?

The correctional facility has been housing immigrant detainees for more than two decades, but they have come under scrutiny in recent weeks since the sheriff announced last month the termination of an inter-governmental service agreement between the jail and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE had been paying the jail $77 per detainee per day to house immigrants who had final court orders of deportation against them and were awaiting removal from the country.

Unlike other sectors of the jail's population - the majority of inmates are county or U.S. Marshals Service prisoners - immigration detainees are not at the Passaic County Jail to serve out criminal sentences.

Under federal law, they are considered "administrative detainees," and are housed at the jail because the government is legally obligated to keep deportable immigrants in custody until they are sent back to their home countries.

Because the immigration service does not have enough of its own detention facilities to hold the increasing numbers of immigrants - both legal and illegal - facing deportation, the federal agency essentially rents space at county jails and other correctional facilities across the country.

"Legally, there's an important distinction," said Bryan Lonegan, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in New York. He referred to the difference between the jail's regular inmates, there for punitive reasons, and immigration detainees.

"One is in detention for criminal reasons: when someone commits a crime, they plead guilty, they're sentenced. That's punishment," he said. "But when immigration takes them into custody, their current detention is not a punishment, their current detention is not a sentence; they're being held so the United States government knows where they are and can actually deport them."

The current practice stems from a 1996 ruling whereby immigrants with a final order of deportation are kept in custody instead of being released on bond, Lonegan said.

On national television and in the local press, Speziale had repeatedly characterized immigrant detainees as hardened criminals. However, he has declined to offer specific proof of those allegations, citing jail confidentiality regulations.

But lawyers, advocates and immigration detainees say that is simply not an accurate picture of those in immigration custody.

"I got a drug conviction, I don't consider myself a hard-core criminal," said Pedro Tavares by telephone from the Passaic County Jail. Tavares said he has been in custody more than 20 months, fighting deportation to the Dominican Republic, a country he has not lived in since he was a child.

"There's a lot in here for drunk driving, having an argument with their wives or a family dispute," Tavares said. "And when they call the police on them, and they come to the house and they got no documentation on them, they arrest them, and that's who Jerry (Speziale) calls hardened criminals."

Lawyers like Lonegan, who said he has met an estimated 700 immigration detainees while conducting legal information seminars at the jail, said about 80 percent of them did have prior criminal convictions, with the remaining 20 percent facing only immigration violations.

The Legal Aid Society attorney said it was not accurate to characterize the detainees as hardened criminals, however, as he found half of those with criminal convictions had committed non-violent offenses such as shoplifting or financial crimes, and the other half drug-related offenses.

The majority of them had already served time for those crimes in other institutions, according to Lonegan, who said that a second arrest, often for something such as a traffic stop, can mean the combination of their immigration status and their prior record makes them eligible for deportation.

"Nobody has clean hands; they've all done something wrong," Lonegan said. "If not a crime, than an immigration violation, but the important thing to remember is they're not being detained as punishment, they're administrative detainees, and the ones at Passaic County Jail are generally low-level crimes."

Immigrant detainees are now being transferred out of Passaic County to other correctional facilities at the rate of 10 to 25 per week, according to county jail officials.

Meanwhile, Speziale has cited negative press, detainee conduct, and pressure from prisoner-rights groups as a major reason he decided to cancel the ICE contract - worth an estimated $7 million last year.

Advocacy groups, detainees, and lawyers familiar with jail operations counter that the timing of the cancellation has more to do with an investigation by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security into the treatment of the immigration detainees.

The probes are being conducted at correctional facilities across the state, including the Passaic County Jail, which is due to be presented to Congress in the coming months.