There Are No More ICE Detainees In Bergen County Jail

HACKENSACK, NJ — The remaining Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees have been moved or released from Bergen County Jail, the Bergen County Sheriff's Office confirmed on Monday.

Public Information Officer Keisha McLean said that 15 detainees were removed Friday morning, confirming what the activist organization Pax Christi New Jersey reported on social media.

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The organization shared a recording of a detainee expressing fear of being transferred away from local family, likely to the Batavia ICE Detention Center, in New York.

"He was transferred by ICE van yesterday over 5 hrs away in the dead of night along w/14 others from Bergen County Jail," they said.

This move comes just over a month after the Bergen County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to end a contract with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which paid the county to house ICE detainees at the county jail in Hackensack.

It also comes before a 45-day deadline the county set for ICE to remove detainees from the jail.

At the time of the decision, Bergen County Sheriff's Office officials told Patch that 23 male detainees and one female detainee were present at the jail. Over the course of that month, some were released, while others were transferred.

Advocates and attorneys pushed the agency to release those detained in Hackensack, but Pax Christi New Jersey rightly predicted that a majority of detainees would be moved outside the state.

"Advocates and attorneys were informed by the Newark ICE Field Office Director, John Tsoukaris, that anyone who was not released would be transferred to the ICE facility in Batavia, NY. This facility is at least a five hour drive away from the Bergen County Jail," the organization said, in late October.

Patch News Partner Documented NY reports that ICE officials have told lawyers for various detainees that the reason their clients won't be released is that they are a public safety threat, even though some are currently detained on unresolved charges for nonviolent crimes.

"We all hoped that ICE would use its discretion to release," Ellen Pachnanda, the attorney-in-charge of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project at the Brooklyn Defender Services, told the publication.

She added: "As long as ICE retains this discretion to transfer, they will transfer."

Patch has reached out to ICE for further comment.