NJ Civil Rights campaign puts BICE on the run: Cruel shell game with detainees won't stop efforts to free them

Over the past two weeks, nearly all the immigrant detainees being held at Passaic County Jail in Paterson, NJ pending deportation have been moved to other facilities, including Hudson County Jail and centers as far away as Oakland Detention facility in Louisiana . This latest maneuver is a clear signal that the growing protests of community activists and the staunch resistance efforts of the detainees have struck a nerve.

Just a week before the mass transfer took place, nearly 30 detainees had signed a letter protesting substandard jail conditions and abusive treatment at the county facility. This collective action followed the summer-long hunger strikes by two Passaic County detainees, Nigel Maccado and Hemneuth Mohabir, to protest jail conditions and demand that the prisoners be moved to Hudson County, where conditions are reportedly more humane.

However, these transfers do not mean that Passaic County has ended its participation in the detention program, as the NJ Civil Right Defense Committee (NJCRDC) has been demanding. Immigration and Passaic County officials recently announced. that the county jail will now serve as a "transfer point" for new groups of detainees, who will be housed there only briefly before being sent on to other prisons. The facility’s new role may also usher in a policy of moving detainees around more frequently, in an effort to throttle the protest movement, by preventing these prisoners from establishing ties with outside groups like NJCRDC, or organizing resistance among themselves.

"They think that clearing out the 'trouble makers' will stop the protests," suggests Eric Lerner, a member of NJCRDC. The transfer policy creates a cruel shell game that will further disrupt the lives of detainees' already beleaguered families, forcing them to travel longer distances for visits, in some cases even making such visits impossible, and cutting off the detainees from established routes to legal assistance. The detention and subsequent deportation of thousands of immigrants, many of them longtime U.S. residents, and all casualties of the post-9/11 hysteria, continues to etch one of the most sorrowful and shameful chapters into our nation’s history.

The NJCRDC has vowed that this latest official maneuver will not stop the growing movement to end these prolonged detentions. The group has targeted the Freeholders meeting of October 14 to bring home their demands. Members and supporters will read brief statements from detainees themselves protesting their imprisonment without charges or trial in violation of the Bill of Rights. As our elected representatives, the freeholders have the legal authority--and the moral responsibility—to take control of the jail and end the contract with federal immigration authorities for housing detainees.

"We think the decision to move the detainees around shows that BICE [Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the new name for the INS] is on the run," says Jeannette Gabriel, another NJCRDC member. "Changing Passaic to a short-term detention center, in direct response to our protests, may look to them like it checks the movement. But it only exposes the highhandedness that comes with official power, and it will only redouble our resolve to end the detentions altogether."

The NJCRDC has been joined by a number of other national and area organizations in calling on the Passaic County Freeholders to stop holding any detainees in the county jail and to end all abuse of their civil and human rights in that facility. The Council on American-Islamic Relations-NJ,  National Writers Union – NJ Local,  NJ Anti-Racist Action,  NJ Solidarity, NJ Workers Democracy Network,  North Jersey Anti-Racist Action,  One People’s Project,  Socialist Party of NJ, Speak out Against the US War in Iraq, Youth Against Exploitation War and Racism have all given their support to these demands. The NJCRDC also vows to widen their efforts, spotlighting detentions in other facilities across the state and the nation, and working with community activists in other counties to terminate the federal contracts.