Thanks to Steve Ramshur and the Hudson Civic Action Group for this excellent discussion of the immigration policy–called “287(g)” in government speak–that pays counties to do the work of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency–by providing local jails and detention facilities.
287(g) is a totally voluntary program. Hudson County is now one of only 41 counties in the entire country (out of 3,144) to sign–effectively putting greed for dollars before the necessary boundary between local law enforcement and national immigration policies.
In other words–now Hudson Co. taxpayers are now subsiding the increasingly harsh, arbitrary and wholly unnecessary pursuit of nonviolent, often long-established undocumented people. Throwing many parents and hard-working people who have been here for 5, 10, 20 years into immigrant prisons.