Law Enforcement Officers in New Jersey Are Transferring More and More Immigrants to ICE

Law enforcement agencies in New Jersey are turning over undocumented immigrants to federal authorities at a rate that is increasing under the Trump Administration and is higher than the national average, according to a new report from the progressive think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective. 

The report focuses on detainer requests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes to law enforcement agencies after local police arrest an undocumented immigrant. The ICE detainers are formal requests, made to officials at municipal police departments and county jails, to hold onto immigrants for 48 hours after they are due to be released on whatever local offenses they were initially arrested for. That gives ICE time to take them into custody.

Local authorities are not required to honor ICE's requests, which skyrocketed 87.5 percent in New Jersey in 2017 compared to 2016. New Jersey authorities comply with 63 percent of the requests, compared to just 54 percent nationally, according to the report. 

The contrast with New York is startling. Earlier this week a New York appellate court ruled that it is unconstitutional for police officers to hold immigrant prisoners for ICE without a warrant issued by a judge. New York City officials already refuse to honor such requests from ICE, unless the immigrants are convicted of a serious crime.

Such "immigration holds," as they are also known, cost local governments money—at least $12 million in New Jersey from 2007 to 2017 for the extra time prisoners were kept locked up. Immigrants on detainer requests are estimated to be held an average of 24 days past their release date, even though the request technically applies only to the first 48 hours. 

Shortly after this data was released Wednesday, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal announced that he is rewriting a 2007 directive from his predecessor, former Attorney General Anne Milgram, which requires local officers to call ICE before releasing someone charged with an indictable crime and suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. The directive is often interpreted as a green light for police and jail officials to fulfill detainers, according to immigration activists. 

Grewal said he is conferring with immigrant rights organizations to write a new directive to be issued in the next two to three weeks. "A 2007 immigration directive can't reflect the immigration realities of 2018," Grewal said.

Those "immigration realities" include a Trump Administration policy that calls for the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants who don't have criminal records. ICE arrests in New Jersey spiked 43 percent in 2017, to 3,311, double the national rate.

Activists argue that if immigrants are afraid local police will turn them over to ICE for deportation, it makes them less likely to report crimes and therefore threatens public safety. "Everyone is less safe when our state and local law enforcement work with ICE in such a way that our communities lose their faith in police," said Johanna Calle, director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

But officials at ICE make the opposite argument. They point to a recent case where an undocumented Mexican man was released from custody at the Middlesex County Jail even though ICE requested he be detained after his release date. That man is now charged with killing three people in Missouri. Middlesex officials said if the man he was deemed such a safety risk at the time, ICE could have sought a warrant from a judge and taken him into custody that way. 

Amol Sinha, executive director of the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union, said that "if someone is a true public safety threat, we have systems in place to keep them away from the public."

Seventeen of New Jersey's 21 counties honor detainer requests from ICE. Two—Middlesex and Ocean—put restrictions on the types of offenses that qualify. Only Burlington and Union do not fulfill the requests. 

But even if officials at county jails do not hand over a released prisoner to ICE, cooperation happens on a daily basis. In September, Rutgers University Police arrested an undocumented Mexican immigrant in New Brunswick for driving under the influence, carrying a fake ID and a range of other offenses, according to Pete McDonough, Rutgers' senior vice president of external affairs. Though the university does not honor detainer requests, it does follow the 2007 Attorney General guidelines to alert ICE about the arrests of undocumented immigrants.

In this case, ICE officers picked up the Mexican immigrant before he was released by Rutgers and transferred him to federal custody. He is now at Elizabeth Contract Detention Center awaiting a hearing on his deportation, according to activists.