People in federal immigration custody are no longer being detained at Illinois jails, following implementation of a law effectively ending immigration detention in the state. That’s a huge win; two counties had challenged the Illinois Way Forward Act in court, risking this hard-fought victory by immigrant communities and their allies.
But in a step back, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instead transferred remaining immigrants to out-of-state jails, ignoring the pleas of advocates and lawmakers who had been urging the agency to release them.
Injustice Watch reports nearly three dozen immigrants were sent to facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas in recent days. “The rest were deported or transferred to other law enforcement agencies.”
Among those transferred out of state was Armando Cazares, who was told to gather up his things in the middle of the night Feb. 3. By early the following morning, he found himself hundreds of miles away, at the Kay County Detention Center in Oklahoma. “They’re just taking me farther and farther from the family,” he said in the report. “I didn’t even wanna tell my mom where I’m at. I’m scared. I’m breaking my mom’s heart.”
House lawmakers, including members from the state’s delegation, had in a Jan. 28 letter urged the Biden administration to release immigrants to shelter in their own homes and communities, which ICE has every ability to do.
“Moreover, transfers are a frightening and dehumanizing experience with deadly consequences, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” they told President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “COVID-19 poses an immediate threat to those detained in immigration detention facilities, a risk that only increases when transfers occur.”
Continued detention is also simply unnecessary, because nearly 75% of ICE detainees as of mid-January had no criminal record at all. “Many more have only minor offenses, including traffic violations,” said TRAC's Immigration Project.
Cazares’ move hundreds of miles away has prolonged his suffering by delaying his immigration hearing for weeks. It was supposed to be on Feb. 10, but now it’s been pushed to at least March. He told Injustice Watch that immigrants who were transferred “are crying all the time. You feel secluded, like we ran out of help.”
Chicago Sun-Times also reports of a COVID-19 outbreak at an Oklahoma jail where at least a dozen people were transferred. It’s unclear if this is the Kay County Detention Center. ICE could have spared immigrants the risk—and agony—of a transfer. But it made a deliberate decision not to. It continues to needlessly detain immigrants amid surging COVID-19 cases all over the country.
Meanwhile, Injustice Watch reported that immigrants “who were released described excited reunions with families and relief at the thought of not having to spend another night in jail. And for their lawyers and advocates, the number of releases shows what can happen when communities come together to end ICE detention.”
ICE’s cruelty should not erase the legislative victory won by local communities. Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ Fred Tsao said in the report there’d have been no releases at all “if we had not had this legislation and basically forced ICE’s hand. That, in itself, is a victory.”
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