Critics Question Department of Corrections' Relationship with Federal Immigration Authorities

WNYC News
By: Christine Black
Published: November 10, 2010
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For twenty years, Federal immigration officials have been stationed on Rikers Island. Critics say the Department of Corrections offers them too much assistance in identifying foreign-born non-citizens, some of whom end up in deportation proceedings. The practice came under fire Monday during a City Council hearing. Critics say all too often immigrants who are in detention, but have not been convicted of a crime, are reported to ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Related Publication

JS Publication November 12, 2010

New York City Enforcement of Immigration Detainers

Justice Strategies is conducting research for a forthcoming report on the combined impact of drug laws and immigration enforcement on jailers, prisoners and taxpayers. The New York City Department of Corrections provided Justice Strategies with a database of all discharges in 2008. We analyzed the dataset of noncitizen prisoners whose top charge is a drug-related offense.

Justice Strategies found that:

  • While Homeland Security purports to target the most dangerous offenders, there appears to be no correlation between offense level and identification for deportation.
  • In New York City, Homeland Security detainers are enforced in such a fashion as to effectively terminate the bail rights of certain pre-trial noncitizen prisoners.
  • Controlling for race and offense level, noncitizens with an ICE detainer spend 73 days longer in jail before being discharged, on average, than those without an ICE detainer.