The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Aspokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees thedetainees, said Wednesday that the Sheriff's Department made the call. "Theydid recently notify us that they want to withdraw from the [Inter-GovernmentalService Agreement], so we stopped sending detainees," said Mike Gilhooley,the ICE spokesman. Spezialewould not comment. Thedetainees, most of whom are being held for violations of civil immigrationlaws, will be shipped to other sites in New Jersey,New York or Pennsylvania, Gilhooley said. The Passaic jail served asone of the major immigration detention facilities in the wake of 9/11, with itspopulation climbing to 386 from 40, according to Ron Fava, the sheriff at thetime. The jail eventually held almost 500 detainees. Alongwith the increase in detainees came protests and hunger strikes about crowding,poor conditions and mistreatment. InDecember 2001, seven detainees staged a hunger strike. In March 2002, AmnestyInternational issued a report saying detainees held in jails, including Passaic, had been abused.The same month, U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, now the governor-elect, toured the jailand wrote a commentary, condemning the prolonged imprisonment of detainees asviolating the basic right of due process. Asrecently as Dec. 13, immigrant advocates charged that jail guards beat anEgyptian detainee - a charge the Sheriff's Department denied. More than90 detainees signed a petition Dec. 17, asking that Homeland Security end itscontract with Passaicbecause of "very poor and health risk conditions at this jail." Heung WahWong, an immigration detainee who passed through Passaic County Jail but is nolonger there, detailed what life was like there in a memo sent to HomelandSecurity. There was one urinal for 58 men, Wong said, and grease floating ontop of the milk served to the detainees. "Weare humans that made a mistake along one of life's long roads," Wongwrote. "We are seen as the waste of America, but we are not!" Haitian-bornJean Alexander, 37, who spent six months at Passaic County Jail before beingreleased Nov. 23, said conditions were worse for an immigrant. "Theystart trouble with us," Alexander said of the guards. AfterNational Public Radio reported in November 2004 that dogs were being used onimmigration detainees in Passaic County Jail, the federal government forbadethat practice and launched an investigation. But theaudit ran into trouble in July, when Speziale ejected the federal auditors,saying they behaved arrogantly. Theauditors were allowed to finish their work after Speziale met with HomelandSecurity officials in Washington, D.C., in August. Theimmigration detainees brought in hefty federal payments to the Sheriff'sDepartment that ranged from an estimated $12 million in 2003 to an expected$6.9 million this year. To offsetthat loss, the Sheriff's Department jail is accepting prisoners from the stateand the U.S.Marshals Service, Maer said. TheMarshals Service pays $77 a day per prisoner, the same amount as Immigrationand Customs Enforcement, while state prisoners are less lucrative, at $62 a dayper prisoner. Passaic has the highestnumber of Marshals Service prisoners of any county jail in the state, with 375prisoners currently, said Jim Tlousis, the U.S.marshal for New Jersey.
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