Essex County Candidate Wants To Fight ICE ‘Deportation Machine’
ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — If you think that Essex County shouldn’t be earning a penny of revenue for housing federal prisoners in Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, there’s a candidate you might be interested in when it’s time to vote for county executive in November: Jay Arena.
Grassroots activism group Jobs and Equal Rights For All, a member of the Resist the Deportation Machine network, recently announced that it will be running Arena as its candidate for county executive in the November general election. Arena will be up against a formidable opponent: longtime Democratic incumbent Joseph DiVincenzo Jr.
Learn more about Arena and the Jobs and Equal Rights For All campaign platform here. People who wish to volunteer with the campaign can reach out to contact@jaera.org or (973) 220-5060.
On Saturday, Arena and other members of the group held a rally at the Essex County Hall of Records in Newark to discuss the group’s current mission: an immediate “blockade of the ICE concentration camps in Essex County.” (Watch a video from the rally below)
Here’s what Arena, an associate professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island, had to say about his group’s shockingly worded campaign tagline.
“During World War II the U.S. government was able to round up people of Japanese descent and place them in concentration camps because the American people failed to denounce and organize to stop that crime. We can’t again stand by, we must take direct action now to shut down the internment camps at the border and everywhere, including right here in Essex County. Furthermore, we demand that no individual, government, or business provide any support to ICE. Silence in the face of the atrocities is consent.”
According to Arena:
“Every day hundreds of families are broken up by the deportation of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. Notorious examples include Pablo Villavicencio, the Brooklyn pizza deliveryman and married father of two children, who ICE arrested three weeks ago and dragged to the Hudson County-run ICE concentration camp. Jean Montrevil, an immigrant rights activist, successful small businessman, and father of four, was arrested in January by ICE after dropping his children off at school in Queens, NY. He was then imprisoned at Joe D’s Newark ICE concentration camp and subsequently deported to Haiti where he had not lived for decades.”
The group plans to hold a rally on Friday, June 29 to demand that DiVincenzo and the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders “immediately end the county’s contract with ICE to hold 800 immigrant detainees at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark.”
The Friday rally will take place at 8:30 a.m. at the Lincoln statue at the corner of Springfield and Market Streets.
ESSEX COUNTY AND ICE CONTRACTS
The Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark is among several prisons in New Jersey that contracts to house ICE detainees. Some of those arrested in high-profile ICE “busts” in North Jersey end up passing through the jail, which was one of three that received scathing condemnation for “inhumane” conditions in a February report from nonprofit advocacy group Human Rights First.
Alleged issues at the jails – which also include the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility and the Hudson County Correctional Facility – include maggot-infested food, suicide risks, a lack of clean underwear and medical treatment done on a “cost-benefit analysis.”
Essex County has taken in millions of dollars in revenue from housing federal detainees at its Newark prison over the past years.
A proposed $725.9 million Essex County budget for 2018 was anticipated to generate $35.7 million by housing federal inmates, immigration detainees and inmates from Gloucester County.”
The annual prison profits have raised criticism from some residents.
“Essex County must not run on blood money,” a local activist recently wrote. “The fact that the county profits from the unconstitutional detention of immigrants, because ICE pays for the beds, is not a valid argument for collaborating in the ICE deportation machine. The county could raise money by selling opioids as well, but that would not make it a wise policy.”
In addition to the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark, ICE also houses its New Jersey prisoners at Bergen County Jail, Delaney Hall Detention Facility, Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, Hudson County Correctional Facility and Monmouth County Correctional Institution, the agency’s website states.
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Photos: Jobs and Equal Rights For All
