NYIFUP Condemns ICE for Heat Outage at Bergen County Jail on Coldest Day in Tri-State in Two Years
January 29, 2020 Contacts: Alejandra Lopez, The Legal Aid Society, AILopez@legal-aid.org, 917-294-9348 Daniel Ball Brooklyn Defender Services, dball@bds.org Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders, rkarerat@bronxdefenders.org ***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*** NYIFUP Condemns ICE for Heat Outage at Bergen County Jail on Coldest Day in Tri-State in Two Years (New York, NY) – The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender…
NYIFUP Statement on Egregious Treatment of Immigrants on Hunger Strike in ICE Detention
January 8, 2020 Contacts: Alejandra Lopez, The Legal Aid Society, AILopez@legal-aid.org, 917-294-9348 Daniel Ball Brooklyn Defender Services, dball@bds.org Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders, rkarerat@bronxdefenders.org ***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*** NYIFUP Statement on Egregious Treatment of Immigrants on Hunger Strike in ICE Detention Attorneys Demand Transparency from Jail Officials and Release of All Immigrants in ICE Custody (New…
NYIFUP Statement on Detained Immigrants’ Hunger Strike and New COVID-19 Outbreak in Hudson County Jail
(New York, NY) – This week, Brooklyn Defender Services, The Bronx Defenders, and The Legal Aid Society – New York City’s defender organizations providing free legal representation to detained immigrants through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) – received multiple reports from people served by the program of an ongoing hunger strike in…
Documented: Advocates skeptical about ICE providing the COVID-19 vaccine to detainees
“We have seen the extreme health risk and crises that are posed by continuing to keep individuals in ICE detention. There’s no ability to socially distance and engage in hygiene practices that would otherwise be intended to prevent the spread of [COVID-19],” said Sarah Deri Oshiro, the managing director of the immigration practice at Bronx Defenders,…
ICE Defied Court Orders, Maintained Secret No-Release Policy: NYCLU, Bronx Defenders
NEW YORK – In papers filed Friday evening, the New York Civil Liberties Union and The Bronx Defenders requested court enforcement in Velesaca v. Wolf, their case challenging the ICE New York Field Office’s use of a secret policy to jail virtually all of the thousands of people they have arrested over the last three…
NJ.com: Hudson County should end the horror of ICE detainment. Don’t renew the contract
“This is the reality of Hudson County’s collaboration with ICE. It is why 61 immigrant-justice organizations just issued a statement calling for the end of the contract, in a coalition led in part by Freedom for Immigrants, which has been instrumental in ending similar contracts in California and elsewhere. It is why the legal service providers of…
NYIFUP Statement About Hudson County’s Contract with ICE
November 17, 2020 NYIFUP Statement About Hudson County’s Contract with ICE The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) provides free, high-quality representation to detained people facing deportation in New York City. Our clients are New Yorkers who are detained in county jails that include the Hudson County Jail in New Jersey. NYIFUP is run…
The Riverdale Press: Council funds help for immigrants
“The city council says it will earmark $28.4 million toward immigration services — funds that will help provide free legal services navigating the citizenship application process, among other services. The funding comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s attempts to raise citizenship application fees from $640 to $1,160 — an increase intended to go…
Blavity: Judge Orders Release Of 26-Year-Old Gambian Immigrant Detained At ICE Facility For 3 Years
“A federal judge ordered ICE officials at a jail in New Jersey on Monday to release Ousman Darboe, a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant from Gambia who has been detained for more than three years, according to his lawyers at The Bronx Defenders. Darboe, a Black Muslim, was pardoned by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in February but has…
WNYC: Held By ICE Longer Than Any New Yorker, Bronx Man Is Finally Freed
“Ousman Darboe arrived from Gambia at age 6. He was locked up by ICE more than three years ago — an extraordinary length of time even more notable because in February, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pardoned him for the alleged crime that landed him in detention: robbing gold chains, which he said he didn’t do. Sophia Gurulé,…
ACLU: For Black Immigrants, Police and ICE Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
“We are setting up Black communities, and the Black immigrants who live in those communities like in the Bronx, to fail,” said Sophia Gurulé, Darboe’s attorney and a policy counsel at Bronx Defenders. “He was basically plagued by constant policing and criminalization since he was a teenager.” Now, Darboe faces the prospect of deportation back…
Documented: Manhattan Judge Says ICE Hasn’t Slowed Down Arrests Enough
“A Manhattan federal judge said Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not complying well with his March injunction that ordered the agency to arrest fewer immigrants. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had asked ICE to provide reports about its arrest activities in the New York City area after his injunction, and said since March…
Law360: ICE Not In ‘Good Compliance’ With Injunction, NY Judge Says
“Law360, New York (August 25, 2020, 5:06 PM EDT) — A Manhattan federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide more information about how decisions are made on detaining people for alleged civil immigration offenses, after immigrant…” Read the full article here
Gothamist: Pardoned By Cuomo But Detained By ICE, Bronx Immigrant Marks Three Years In ICE Detention
“In a series of court decisions since the pardon, neither immigration nor federal judges have agreed to his release — even on bond. “Black immigrants are treated differently in these court proceedings,” said Sophia Gurulé, his attorney from Bronx Defenders. “For some reason they don’t value the community ties that he has, they don’t value…
ABC News: Detained immigrants demand release from New Jersey jail due to heat wave
“Attorneys for immigrants detained at the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack are demanding they be released amid the heat wave and reports of broken air conditioning at the Hackensack facility, and Eyewitness News took an exclusive tour of the jail to check on conditions. The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, and the Bronx Defenders…
Patch: Reports Of AC Failure At Bergen County Jail As Heat Wave Hits NJ
“The Bergen County Sheriff’s Department reports that temperatures inside the Bergen County jail are currently between 70 and 73 degrees. A group of immigration attorneys say that’s a lie. As temperatures touch the mid-90s, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project and their legal providers continue to call for the release of their clients held…
NJ.com: ICE detainees should be released because air conditioning is failing in N.J. jail, attorneys say
“A group of attorneys are demanding the release of detained immigrants from the Bergen County jail due to the reports of broken air conditioning systems over the weekend, as the state is in the middle of heat wave and a coronavirus pandemic. The New York Immigrant Family Unity Project sent a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after…
Attorneys for Detained Immigrants Demand Their Release from Bergen County Jail Amid Heat Wave and Reports of Broken Air Conditioning
July 27, 2020 CONTACTS: Alejandra Lopez, The Legal Aid Society, 917-294-9348, AILopez@legal-aid.org Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders, 917-635-4326, rkarerat@bronxdefenders.org Dan Ball, Brooklyn Defender Services, 203-213-9303, dball@bds.org ***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*** (NEW YORK, NY) – The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, and The Bronx Defenders – New York City’s defender organizations providing free legal representation to…
Bronx Defenders Statement on Passage of Protect Our Courts Act
July 22, 2020 CONTACT Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders (RKarerat@bronxdefenders.org) (NEW YORK, NY) – Sarah Deri Oshiro, Managing Director of the Immigration Practice at The Bronx Defenders, issued the following statement in response to the passage in the New York State Senate today of the Protect Our Courts Act: “We applaud the New York State…
Bronx Defenders Statement on DACA Decision
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*** Bronx Defenders Statement on DACA Decision June 18, 2020 CONTACT Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders (RKarerat@bronxdefenders.org) (NEW YORK, NY) – Sarah Deri Oshiro, Managing Director of the Immigration Practice at The Bronx Defenders, issued the following statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday blocking the Trump Administration from ending the…
Gotham Gazette: As Courts Reopen, Threat of ICE Returns: State Lawmakers Must Protect Our Neighbors
“ICE has already used the courthouse to trap immigrants during the current crisis. On March 13, as President Trump declared a National Emergency, Mr. RC, a client of The Bronx Defenders, appeared in state court in Poughkeepsie. Despite the mounting pandemic and the deployment of state and federal resources to try to contain the virus…
City Limits: Opinion: ICE Detention Facilities Have Failed to Protect People from COVID-19
“As COVID-19 continues to devastate the country, we have witnessed the failure of Immigration Customs & Enforcement (ICE) to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus in our local jails. It is hard to imagine a government agency less equipped to address the COVID-19 pandemic than ICE. Even under “normal” circumstances before the pandemic, ICE proved…
Univision: “No están preparados para la pandemia”: hispano habla de su experiencia en un centro de detención de ICE
“El peruano Carlos Usategui, quien estuvo detenido dos meses en el Orange County Correctional Facility, en Nueva York, asegura que en ese centro penitenciario no se están tomando en serio la crisis desatada por el coronavirus, pues no tienen mascarillas, guantes ni desinfectantes disponibles y los presos están expuestos peligrosamente al virus.” Watch the full…
The Nation: In ICE Detention, Forced to Pay for Soap
“At this point, the coronavirus has infected hundreds of thousands of Americans and killed over 50,000. One of the CDC’s most basic guidelines for avoiding COVID-19 is, of course, frequently washing one’s hands. Robyn Barnard, an asylum attorney in Southern California, says that her client contacted her and asked her to put money in his…
Seven Medically Vulnerable Immigrants in ICE Detention Seek Release Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Represented By Legal Aid, Bronx Defenders, Paul Weiss, ACLU-NJ
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 28, 2020 CONTACTS: Alejandra Lopez, The Legal Aid Society, ailopez@legal-aid.org Ryan Karerat, The Bronx Defenders, rkarerat@bronxdefenders.org Hanna Johnson, ACLU, HJohnson@aclu.org Paloma Aguas, ACLU-NJ, paguas@aclu-nj.org Seven Medically Vulnerable Immigrants in ICE Detention Seek Release Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, Represented By Legal Aid, Bronx Defenders, Paul Weiss, ACLU-NJ (NEW YORK, NY) – The Legal…