The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The "revenue population," as one official called the detainees, can help
counties defray the cost of running jails and even lower property taxes.

What county officials did not expect was being thrown into the roiling
debate over federal immigration policy or the suddenly rising costs of
inmate care and legal fees to defend against lawsuits.

Taken together, the changes have several officials rethinking what for many
was a much-needed budget Band-Aid.

The controversy has been fueled by incidents in which detainees and their
advocates claim mistreatment. In the past six months:

* The Department of Homeland Security banned all its contract facilities
from using dogs after a Cuban detainee in Passaic was hospitalized following
an attack by a guard dog.

* One officer was suspended and 11 officers at the Hudson County
Correctional Facility face disciplinary charges for allegedly beating a
detainee. The incident, along with the alleged dog attack, has sparked an
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector
General into the treatment of detainees at six facilities nationwide,
including Hudson and Passaic.

* In Monmouth County, the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee, an
advocacy group, submitted to county officials written statements from 28
detainees complaining of overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. In two
complaints, detainees describe an incident in which guards beat a Vietnamese
detainee so badly that he defecated on himself.

Officials in all three counties say their jails meet federal guidelines and
treat detainees humanely. They argue that they are being unfairly criticized
by immigrant advocates for their role in carrying out federal immigration
policies over which they have no control.

"It's frustrating that anger over national policy is being conflated with
their dealings with these local facilities," said James Kennelly, spokesman
for Hudson County. "Hudson County isn't picking people up off the streets
with some minor offense trying to deport them. It's the federal government
doing that. But people who hate the policy want to smear our jail and it's
not fair."

MORALS CLAUSE
The boom in immigration detention can be traced to a 1996 law requiring the
deportation of any foreigner who commits a crime of "moral turpitude."

Federal immigration agents interpreted the law broadly, arresting foreigners
with years-old convictions for everything from rape and murder to possession
of a few marijuana joints.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sparked a new wave of crackdowns, the
latest targeting more than 400,000 immigration fugitives -- people who had
been ordered deported but who never left the United States. Last year, an
average of 22,814 immigrants were being detained nationwide on any given
day, up from 6,785 in 1994, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Passaic County, which has long held federal detainees, is now the main
holding area for immigrants arrested in New York City. Hudson is building a
new dormitory so it can hold more.

Over the past few years, Monmouth, Middlesex, Bergen, Mercer and Sussex
counties all agreed to rent jails as immigration lockups.

Members of human rights groups say many of the jails were designed to hold
criminal suspects awaiting trial and are unfit for detainees -- many of them
non-criminals -- who often are held for months or even years.

The exact number of immigrants held in New Jersey jails is unclear.

In early April, Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and
Immigration Enforcement, said there were 702 detainees housed in New Jersey.
But numbers provided the same week by county officials in Passaic,
Middlesex, Bergen and Hudson counties alone totaled 944.

Officials in Bergen County said they are re-examining the decision by former
sheriff Joel Trella to house immigration detainees, saying it may not be
worth the money -- or the headaches.

While the county receives $85 per day to house each detainee, it costs at
least $60 to guard and care for them, County Administrator Tim Dacey said.
And officials are increasingly concerned over potential liability issues,
especially in areas like providing medical care.

"It probably isn't costing us, but we're not making money like he sold it,"
Dacey said.

Thom Ammirato, a former spokesman for Trella, disputed Dacey's argument,
saying the current administration's own audit showed the program was making
money.

"By far it's worth it," he said.

DENTAL WORRIES
Antoni Rumierz, a detainee currently held in Middlesex County, is the kind
of person Dacey worries about.

Since his arrest for possession of stolen property in Massachusetts in 1995,
Rumierz, a former green card holder, has spent 10 years bouncing among seven
county jails in four states as he fights deportation to Poland, according to
court papers.

Seated at a visitors booth inside the jail, he grimaces to reveal eight
missing teeth, the result, he says, of the lack of dental care while being
held at the Passaic and Hudson county jails.

When he asked to see a dentist, Rumierz said jail officials told him,
"You're going to be deported soon, so we're not going to (fix your teeth)."

Rumierz was moved to Middlesex last year. He is suing the counties of
Passaic and Hudson for the loss of his teeth and vows not to settle for less
than $100,000.

"You try to make a profit out of warehousing people and you're going to
fail," said Rumierz's attorney, Regis Fernandez of Newark. "It's not a
money-making situation unless you cut corners and you have this situation
where people's teeth are falling out."

Both counties say detainees are given access to medical care. In a response
to the lawsuit, attorneys representing the Department of Homeland Security,
which also is named in the complaint, say Rumierz repeatedly refused to go
the dentist.

There have been other incidents to legally expose county jails.

In Hudson County, a dozen guards face disciplinary charges over the March
2004 incident in which an Egyptian detainee was beaten. Kennelly, the Hudson
County spokesman, defended the jail, saying: "We put through 3,000 detainees
in seven years without a single incident. This is the first incident rising
to the level it did."

In Monmouth County, the sheriff's office is investigating written complaints
sent by detainees to the board of freeholders in March. Officials in
Monmouth did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Most complaints stem from the transfer of the federal detainees from a
minimum-security pod to a maximum-security pod, where they say they are
treated like violent felons and receive inadequate health care.

Two detainees, Cecil Harvey and Huseyin Selbes, describe an incident in
which a Vietnamese detainee, San Nguyen, was beaten by guards.

"I personally saw when he was dragged from his cell, punched, then slammed
into the ground and beaten some more," Harvey writes. "The thumps echoed
through unit M-1."

Undersheriff Ted Freeman said Nguyen became disruptive during a search of
the pod to identify gang members and was removed from his cell and placed in
disciplinary lockup. He defended conditions in the special section for
immigration detainees, saying the detainees are provided bottled water and
will soon have renovated showers in response to complaints.

Detainees like Rumierz, who have been housed in several different jails,
often describe conditions in Passaic's crowded, 54-year-old jail as the
harshest. Over the past few years, several have gone on brief hunger strikes
to protest.

Passaic County Sheriff's Department spokesman Bill Maer defended the jail's
record, saying the facility consistently meets federal standards.

"If we were mistreating detainees, the federal government would have
canceled our contract many years ago," he said.

Over the past several years, the jail has held more immigration detainees to
fill beds left empty by a drop in the number of state inmates, which the
jail long held during a decades-long overflow in the state prison system.

The two populations are dramatically different. Many of the immigration
detainees have never been in prison. Guards say they're more docile and
easier to handle than hardened criminals in the state inmate population.

But Maer concedes that even the hardened criminals attracted far less
attention and caused less controversy.

"We certainly have had better success with other classes of prisoners," Maer
said.

Brian Donohue covers immigra tion issues. He may be reached at
bdonohue@starledger.com or (973) 392-1543.
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