City Council Hearing Probes Conditions for ICE Detainees in New York

The New York City Council’s immigration committee held its first hearing of 2022 this Monday about conditions for immigrant detainees at Orange County Correctional Facility (OCCF), following a possible COVID-19 outbreak at the upstate facility at the end of January, as well as complaints alleging abuse and unsafe conditions which prompted a hunger strike on Feb. 17.

That same day, six immigrant advocacy groups—Catholic Charities Community Services, Envision Freedom Fund, For the Many, Freedom for Immigrants, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and the NYU School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic—filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties over alleged racist and retaliatory abuse, violence, unsafe conditions, and medical neglect of detainees at the site amidst the pandemic. Five days later, two New York state corrections officers at the facility in Goshen were moved out of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee unit amid the allegations, according to a Feb. 23 letter from Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.