New Jersey Community Members Take Direct Action, Blockade Hudson County Jail, to Demand Releases, Not Transfers, for ICE Detainees
The action is the latest in a series of direct actions and protests targeting ICE in the state of New Jersey
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HUDSON COUNTY, NJ — Saturday, October 16th, a decentralized network of community members and immigration activists disrupted business as usual in New Jersey by blockading the entrance to Hudson County Jail with their bodies to demand the “releases, not transfers” of people held by ICE. Despite recent community victories to end collaboration between local jails and ICE, advocates say ICE is retaliating by cruelly and clandestinely transferring undocumented detainees far away, rather than releasing them to their families.
Participants in this action included a decentralized network of individuals including directly impacted people, family and friends of people in ICE detention, activists and allies, and members of immigrant rights groups including Movimiento Cosecha, NYC ICE Watch, and Abolish ICE NY/NJ.
As Hudson County’s ICE contract comes to an end November 1, detainees are actively being transferred to facilities out of state instead of being released. Many undocumented people held in ICE detention in New Jersey are longtime residents of NJ and NY who have families, communities, homes, and jobs to return to. Activists say ICE has the authority to release people from detention on parole, on bond, or into community-based alternatives to detention rather than transfer them, but chooses not to. Lucrative contracts with ICE award up to $120 per-head to participating prisons. Now with the ICE contracts ending in New Jersey, facilities in faraway states will continue profiting off each person who is transferred.
While prisons profit, people suffer. In 2018, Hudson County billed ICE more than 25 million for jailing immigrants. The Hudson County jail has been cited by numerous watchdog groups — including Detention Watch Network — for its notoriously poor conditions. As of October 2020, an Office of Detention Oversight report documented “Significant Incidents” at the Hudson County facility including 10 instances of “suicide watches/constant watch/mental health observation,” which occurred in eight out of the 12 months surveyed. Historically, Hudson County Jail has been in the top 20% of facilities for transfers, with 60% of the detained population being transferred.
On September 1, NJ Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez signed a letter urging ICE’s Acting Director Tae D. Johnson to release detainees who do not meet the immigration enforcement and removal priorities set by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on February 18, 2021, specifically, “any person who is not suspected of having engaged in terrorism or espionage, and any person who does not pose a threat to public safety.” Despite this request, transfers are continuing, wreaking havoc in the lives of people in detention and their loved ones.
“What is happening here is double jeopardy”, stated Daniel Jones, a Jamaican national who lived in Brooklyn for 30 years prior to his current detention at Hudson. “No matter how hard we try to show ICE that they have a choice to either keep us here through a pandemic or release us back to our families and children where they need us, they sadly continue to choose money over our lives.”
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All photos and videos below are free for media use, and can be attributed to Cosecha NYC.
Videos
1. Action compilation (with subtitles)
2. Intro video (English)
2. Intro video (Spanish)
3. Singing during blockade
5. Blockade participant (Sami Disu)
6. Action footage
7. Abolish ICE chant
Photos
