Following years of protests against Democratic county officials who lock up immigrants at county jails through multimillion dollar deals with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, New Jersey lawmakers passed a bill Thursday that would ban private and public entities from signing and renewing immigration detention contracts. 

But while the move was cheered by many immigration advocates, it comes as ICE under President Biden is transferring local detainees from New Jersey facilities to detention centers elsewhere in the country, often without warning or notice to their attorneys, at a rate not seen during prior administrations. So the fear is that without detention centers in New Jersey -- which in the past have held as many as 2,000 immigrants from both New Jersey and New York -- ICE will simply transfer local immigrants far away from their families and attorneys. 

The bill, which passed the state Senate and Assembly and now awaits a signature from Governor Phil Murphy, would make New Jersey the fourth state to limit or ban ICE detention agreements. “The statewide ban would confirm the message that continues to be raised at the local level: profiting off of pain and family separation contradicts New Jersey values,” said Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Still, the family separation that defines ICE detention for many immigrants wouldn’t necessarily end with the bill being signed into law. Because while the detention numbers in New Jersey have dropped dramatically in recent months, instead of being released many detainees are ending up in facilities in Alabama, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania.

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