Inside Orange County Jail: ICE Detainee Struggles

BJ: Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Finley. This is a listener-supported podcast created by your friends at The Monroe Gazette, covering New York state politics. I'm your host, BJ Mendelson. You know, with all the talk in Southern Orange County about ICE and the potential conflicts of interest that exist between the Orange County Sheriff's Department and the county's lucrative ICE contracts, I thought we should do some more digging.

Specifically, since Orange County Jail is the destination for a lot of New York City's ICE detainees, I want to know more about the situation going on at the prison. So with us today is Madison Koening. Madison is the staff attorney at the New York Family Immigrant Family Union Project, which is part of the Legal Aid Society.

So let's get to our interview with Madison, and I'll see you on the other side of it.

Madison Koenig:
My name is Madison Koenig. I am a NYFIUP staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. It's the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. We represent detained New Yorkers and their immigration proceedings. I've been doing this for four years, almost exactly, since I graduated from law school.

BJ Mendelson:
Well, that's awesome. I really appreciate you going into that field too. I wish more people would. Let me ask you, because we're having a hard time getting Congressman Pat Ryan and State Senator James G. Skoufis to visit Orange County Correctional. Congressman Pat Ryan's staff won't give us a straight answer and Skoufis has made excuses saying he's not sure if he's got permission to enter the facility. So I'm hoping you might be able to provide some insight first on the situation at OCJ, more broadly concerning the ICE detainees.

Madison Koenig:
Yeah, I think still the majority of people who are arrested in New York City are brought to OCJ. There are a couple of other facilities where they might go, including the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. But I think still the majority are going to Orange County Jail, as well as people who are arrested in Long Island or… in sort of downstate, upstate, in like Westchester County and places like that. So it [OCJ] is both, you know, functioning both as the county jail, but then also an I.C.E. facility. It's been operating as a I.C.E. facility for many years.

Lawfully the Congressional members should have authority to inspect the facility because their constituents are being held there. But we've seen that I.C.E. has really made it difficult for elected officials to inspect the facilities even when, even though that is the regulation.

BJ:
What are some of the common needs of the men, women, and families that are placed in facilities such as OCJ?

Madison Koenig:
the common …

BJ:
The common needs, like what are things that they need that maybe they're not getting?

Madison Koenig:
There is a lot, I mean… We've had really consistent complaints about the quality of the food, you know, getting plain pasta for every meal without any meat or vegetables or fruit, having food that makes people sick, just not having sufficient food every meal over, you know, my entire time being at Legal Aid, we've gotten consistent complaints about that.

Complaints about access to medication, needing to go see your doctor and not being brought to the doctor and not getting payments for headaches or injuries or things like that. Currently, one of my clients keeps on asking me if I can send him sweatshirts or clothes like that because he's been really cold and they haven't provided him with sufficient blankets and clothing to handle the transition into the fall. And then we have the opposite problem in the middle of summer when it's consistently really hot. There's also a lot of issues with access to attorneys. Not able to, know, people not being able to call their attorneys. And then we have, there's like a video system for attorneys to do calls with with our clients that we regularly have problems with. Where the video system just isn't working today because it rained. And for some reason, the technology is so old that the rain can affect it, or the audio quality is so bad that you and yor client can't hear each other.

It can be really frustrating. It can also be really difficult to prepare a case, especially on the quick turnaround that you have for a detained removal proceeding, to make sure that you're doing everything thoroughly and sufficiently.

BJ:
Right. And so what, I mean, I know, I know it's sort of like a big question, but I'm trying to understand the funding mechanism because I see Orange County spending a lot of money, like renovating the jail. Like they've authorized a lot of money and I know that the I.C.E. also made a lot of money available. So what, what would be the holdup here in terms of getting these video systems fixed and these phone systems fixed?

Madison:
Yeah, I don't know if it's just like the system that they've always been using because some of the other facilities use, you know, Microsoft Teams and Zoom accounts. So there's challenges with getting regular video calls, but at least we're not running into technical issues all the time. I don't know if it's just sort of like that is what has been in place and they would like to continue to be in place. A lot of other … ICE detention facilities and other jails use the same system. Maybe they have fewer technical problems with it.

BJ:
I mean, is there anything else that's happening there that people should know about?

Madison:
I think the issues with just getting the basic needs met is really huge. Just not being able to have enough to eat or have proper nutrition when you do get meals is something that really is difficult for my clients. I also think, I haven't seen this as much with my current batch of clients, but in the past they've also removed people from OCJ and just sent them to other detention facilities around the country, including in … I have had clients sent to Mississippi, to Florida, other of my colleagues have had them sent to California or Washington,New Mexico, just all over the country. So that can also be an issue because this is one of the closest facilities to New York City, one of the few facilities that people's families can actually go visit them at. And we know that when people are cut off from their families, cut off from their lawyers, they're more likely to give up on their case, even if it is a strong case, just because they can't handle the conditions of detention any longer.

BJ: Have you raised these concerns at all to the Orange County Executive or to, I mean, what offices have you been in touch with about this to fix this?

Madison: I know lawyers who have been in touch with the higher ups at Orange County many times over years. I just have not seen a lot of results. I'm not sure what, like if we have any current ongoing complaints, but I know that we, after clients have complained, that the clients have tried to go on hunger strikes to try and protest the quality of the food, we've also tried to put pressure on the administration of the jail and just haven't gotten a lot of results yet.

BJ:
What can we do as residents for people that are living in Orange County and they're listening to us about the conditions at OCJ. What are the things that we can do to help?

Madison Koenig:
making complaints to The detention center always helps. There's also a bill called the Dignity Not Detention Act. And there's a coalition that supports that, that is trying to push for New York state facilities like OCJ to get out of the business of I.C.E. detention and to prohibit state and local law enforcement from using their facilities as places for I.C.E. So we're always encouraging people to contact their representatives about that.

And they're also, the Dignity Not Detention Cmpaign and other amazing groups like First Friends do a lot to try and make sure that the people who are in the detention facility know that they're not alone through organizing visits and organizing letter writing campaigns just to make sure that the individuals who are being held there know that they have community support and that the jail knows that the community is watching.

BJ:
And how can we support your work at the Legal Aid Society?

Madison:
Yeah, mean, I think supporting things like the Dignity Detention Act definitely helps. You know, this year we'll be asking both the New York City Council and then also the New York State Assembly for additional funding for our work because we, you know, everyone on my team is working to maximum capacity right now to try and make sure that we represent everyone who gets picked up by ICE. Every New Yorker who gets picked up by ICE has a lawyer and has a quality defense, but it's hard work and it's hard to do with a small team. So we're always trying to find ways to expand our team.

BJ:
Is there anything on this topic that I didn't ask you that you think may be worth for people to listen to hear?

Madison:
yeah, I think I guess the only other thing I would say is just like, while things are definitely much worse now under the Trump administration, they were not great under the Biden administration and the conditions at the detention center and the quality of the treatment that our clients are receiving has been an issue for many years and it is something that we need to really like systemically address.

BJ:
Absolutely, and it just so happens that the county executive is up for election this November. So we will definitely let people know that.

Show Outro:

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