Sat Feb 27, 2010 at 12:08:40 PM EST

This is a diary from this weekend, with an interesting conversation going on in the comments. Jump in at will. - - promoted by Rosi

Hudson County Jail is getting national attention.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Jan 12th that it would close the 300 bed detention center in Manhattan, Varick St and move them to "another facility in the NY metropolitan area", because Varick didn't meet their standards for outdoor exercise and visitation.  As if any jail in New Jersey meets ICE's detention standards. Oh yeah, and because $250 per night (that was going to an Alaskan Indian tribe) was twice what Hudson charges, $111 per night.  Think of the cost savings (if you do, you will find out that that saves less than 1% of the $1.7 billion budgeted last year for custody operations).  NY and NJ advocates, as Bill Orr pointed out here, are calling for review of who needs to be in detention.  We are at a record number of over 32,000 people being detained each night.

http://www.bluejersey.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=14636