ICE sent New Jersey migrants to states with tougher immigration judges after Delaney Hall uprising

Federal immigration authorities have been sending detainees from Newark’s Delaney Hall to red states throughout the country, The Jersey Vindicator has learned — and at least one attorney thinks the moves are meant to speed up deportations.

Earlier this month, at least nine people being detained at Delaney Hall who were being helped by the advocacy group American Friends Service Committee were shipped out to centers in Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado and especially Texas, according to Priscila Abraham, a senior staff attorney with the organization.

“There were a lot of transfers,” Abraham told the Vindicator on Wednesday. “I’ve heard anecdotally from other attorneys their clients have been sent to El Paso … that’s what I’ve been hearing the most.”

Abraham believes the riot over living conditions that erupted at the 1,000-bed facility on Doremus Avenue on June 12 — which also led to four male detainees breaking out — contributed to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement decision.

“I believe the transfers occurred because of the protest against horrific conditions at Delaney Hall, including lack of food and water,” she said.

Others think the agency has even more nefarious motives.

“It’s very obvious they’re moving them to conservative jurisdictions … where [the judges] will be more favorable to the administration,” said Carolina Curbelo, a Ridgewood attorney who chairs the New Jersey chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“They’re looking at who are those judges, will they deny asylum seekers?” Curbelo said. “They’re going to be tougher … and jurisdictions where you know the immigration court is tougher, the government will win.”

“This is purposely being planned this way.”

Still, most of the details remain scarce — including how many detainees have been sent away altogether and why they were transferred.

ICE did not respond to a series of questions about the moves, including who was sent where, how the agency chose which detainees would go and if it purposely sent them to more conservative court districts so they could be more easily deported.

The agency opened the now-overflowing Delaney Hall earlier this year amid Trump’s hard-line immigration push — which has landed more than 50,000 people behind bars, awaiting deportation, according to The Associated Press.

GEO Group, a private firm, runs the facility as part of a 15-year, $1 billion contract.

But it’s proved a lightning rod for controversy during the short amount of time it has been open, with authorities arresting Newark Mayor Ras Baraka during protests outside its walls May 9.

Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was also hit with charges of assaulting federal officers, but has denied the allegations. She was arraigned on June 25 and pleaded not guilty.

Living in the tent city

Garden State attorneys aren’t the only ones noticing the outflow of detainees from Delaney Hall to other states. El Paso Matters, a nonprofit news outlet based in El Paso, Texas, reported that following the roit, dozens of women arrived at a tent city where immigrants are being detained on the border.

One woman, an Ecuadorean native who’s lived in the United States for two decades, told her family that she and 50 other women had been sent from Newark to what the government calls a “soft-sided facility,” a euphemism for tents, on El Paso’s northeastern edge.

“She specifically used the word animals — they were being treated like animals inhumanely the way they were transferred over to Texas,” the detainee’s sister told El Paso Matters.

“She said they weren’t given any beds. They were in tents outside, just waiting for directions. She mentioned they were being emotionally abused, and she just broke down when she said that.”

The detained mom of three’s children are all U.S. citizens, and she’s authorized to work in the country.

She’d applied for permanent residency after marrying an American citizen last year, her sister said.

Although it’s unclear how long the women will stay in the El Paso camp — or if they’ll be deported from there — the detainee said a few days later that her situation had improved.

“We have been lucky that they’re treating us well,” she told her family. “We eat good food, we shower every day, they give us clean clothes every day.”

But Abraham said she’s heard horror stories from American Friends staffers about the camps, such as detainees who are suffering in the heat, can’t get clean clothes, barely see the sun and can’t call their lawyers.

“Two colleagues shared with me that their clients are being held in the tent city … in El Paso, and that access to (legal) counsel has been extremely difficult,” Abraham said in an email. “They were unable to provide me with more information because they have not been able to have confidential phone calls with the detainees.”

“Another colleague shared that at another facility in El Paso, Texas, the AC has not been working for about a week, and their dorm has two operating fans,” Abraham said. “My colleague said her client could hardly breathe on a video call because of the heat.”

Most detention centers have also cut off outdoor recreation, she added, and at least one detainee complained that his Louisiana facility hadn’t given him or his fellow migrants clean clothes in nearly two weeks.

“In order to wash their clothing, they are forced to be naked while washing and drying their clothing,” Abraham said. “The client continues to wait for his deportation.”

It’s not clear if the detainees have been allowed to talk to their families — most of whom can no longer visit because their loved ones have been transferred to facilities halfway across the country.

“It’s very difficult, almost impossible to get any sort of communication with clients who are detained there,” Abraham said.