Ice Removes 54 Detainees From New Jersey Jail Without Warning – Patch.com

September 25 2020

Max Siegelbaum @maxsiegelbaum

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ICE swiftly and abruptly deported five immigrants from the Essex County Correctional Facility and moved 49 to staging areas to be prepared for deportation on Tuesday. Advocates say many of the affected people were susceptible to deportation because they lacked attorneys. ICE said the movement of detainees from the jail “was part of routine operations within the Newark ERO field office.” The agency did not address questions about where the detainees were sent or whether the 49 others were deported yet. WNYC

In other local immigration news…

New Jersey Domestic Workers Call for a Bill of Rights

New Jersey domestic workers are calling on the state to enact legislation to protect them. They say they consistently deal with wage theft, sexual harassment and an overall fear of speaking about those issues due to the threat of deporatation. “Very urgently, we need a bill of rights,” said Mirian Mijanos, a housekeeper who said she left one job after she was sexually harassed. Mijanos spoke Wednesday following the release of a survey conducted by the Rutgers Center for Women & Work. The state had 65,000 domestic workers in 2019, twice as many as in 2003, according to the study. In New Jersey, 97 percent of the workers are female and 52 percent are immigrants. Asbury Park Press

City Agencies Pay White Employees More Overtime than Black, Latino and Asian Workers, Lawsuit Says

City agencies are doling out tens of thousands of dollars to White employees while their Black, Latino and Asian colleagues are skipped over, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court. In one instance, a Latino Department of Citywide Administrative Services employee received 48.5 hours of overtime in 2019, while a white colleague at the same agency recorded 1,074 hours worth, netting him $56,000 more than what his colleague took home. The suit alleges white supervisors at two DCAS shops have perpetrated “a longstanding pattern and practice of excluding from the overtime rotation minority city laborers.” THE CITY

De Blasio Administration Says it Will Appeal Court Order Halting Chinatown Jail

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said it would appeal a court order issued Monday from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge John Kelley, which found environmental and land use approvals for a planned new jail tower in Chinatown invalid and barred construction until new reviews are complete. The tower was integral to the Mayor’s plan of closing Rikers Island, but it has faced immense pushback from Chinatown residents and critics of the plan, who seek to abolish the jail entirely instead of building new ones. THE CITY

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