Don't kill ICE contracts. Use the 'blood money' to help immigrants | Editorial

Pablo Villavicencio poses with his two daughters, Luciana, left, and Antonia. A guard at a military base called ICE on him as he tried to deliver a pizza. Then he was sent to Hudson County jail. (Family photo via AP)

Democrats in Hudson county finally caved to loud protests on Thursday and agreed to phase out of their contract to jail unauthorized immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
 
Activists are right to be outraged at the Trump administration's jailings of churchgoing dads and schoolteachers, who languish behind bars for months while even a sex offender gets out with an ankle bracelet. But ending the ICE contract is the wrong approach.
 
The strategy here is to compel counties nationwide to kill their contracts with ICE, leaving the administration no choice but to stop detaining so many people because it has nowhere to put them. Essex and Bergen county jails are the next likely targets.

Hudson County signals end to controversial ICE contract
 
Yet given the fight put up in blue Hudson county, what's the likelihood that enough of this country will kill these lucrative contracts, forcing firings of public workers and potential hikes in property taxes?
 
More likely, the detainees will simply be transferred to remote locations, further away from their families and lawyers. So we agree with legal advocates who say this isn't the best way to defend them against President Trump.
 
Protestors have a point, though, when they call this "blood money." Now that we are jailing pizza guys alongside criminals, Essex, Hudson and Bergen counties have been collectively taking in about $6 million a month from ICE, WNYC's Matt Katz reported.
 
So why not take a piece of that blood money and make life better for these people?

Critics slam Hudson freeholders for ICE contract renewal
 
Start by guaranteeing them a free lawyer. Gov. Murphy allocated $2.1 million in the last state budget to work toward a universal representation program, but it likely won't be enough. So why not also create a county legal aid program with the ICE profits?
 
Immigrants arrested in New York usually end up in Hudson and Bergen jails, where they get free lawyers funded by a New York program. But most picked up in New Jersey go to Essex county jail, where they don't have the same guarantee.
 
Until Hudson county stops housing immigrants for ICE, it has a small grant program to provide at least some free lawyers to detainees. Counties in California, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin have more robust programs.
 
Fighting to kill the ICE contract in Essex county jail, which houses about 800 immigrant detainees, only sends them elsewhere. Instead, push Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo to provide more services for them here.
 
A spokesman for DiVincenzo said Friday he'd consider providing free lawyers. We must ensure jail conditions are good, too. But at the end of the day, to seek justice, you need a qualified attorney. It's months behind bars, versus the rest of your life.
 
Currently, legal aid clinics with limited resources pick the cases they think they have the best chance of winning. That's not always easy to determine in a brief interview. And you can't overstate the importance of a good lawyer.

Look at the Egyptian teacher from Jersey City who ICE tried to deport back to the country where he faced a death sentence. He just won asylum here.
 
More than 10 times as many immigrants have been able to win their cases with a guaranteed lawyer, according to a study by the Vera Institute for Justice. Imagine how hard it is to defend yourself in court, given the complexity of immigration law, especially if English isn't your first language.
 
Seth Kaper-Dale, a pastor leading the fight to kill the ICE contracts, is right that jailing a dad who's lived here 20 years like a criminal is amoral. But forcing him to be transferred doesn't defend him against Trump's deportation machine.
 
Instead, demand better services here than anywhere else, starting with a top-notch lawyer.

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