Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s sudden and surprise transfer of dozens of New York and New Jersey immigrants out of a detention center in the Hudson Valley this week constitutes a shift from prior years, when more than 2,000 immigrants awaiting the disposition of their deportation cases were held in five local jails. Today, there are just more than 100 detainees at just two facilities, and the number is dropping fast.

This stems both from a national decline in the number of people arrested and held by ICE compared to during the Trump Administration, and from the fact that local political pressure against deplorable conditions in ICE-contracted jails has led to the closure of three ICE facilities in North Jersey last year and litigation to shutter a fourth.

Now, that pressure is part of what is prompting ICE to depopulate the fifth and final facility in the region that holds immigrants — the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, NY. Without warning on Monday, dozens of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans held at the facility were transferred to facilities around the country, including a privately-run jail in Mississippi where immigrants have previously complained of officers’ use of excessive force, like strangling.

Advocates say the transfers are retaliatory — in response to public allegations of abuse at Orange County — and they serve to cut immigrants’ ties with families and make it harder to prepare legal defenses.

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