Video, Photos, Transcript: Rep. Dan Goldman, State Senator Gounardes Call for End to ICE Detention at Notorious Federal Prison

 

 

Washington, D.C. — Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10), State Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Assemblymember Bobby Carroll today hosted a press conference outside the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn to call for an end to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) usage of the facility to detain over 100 immigrants. Federal judges have recently called the prison ‘barbaric’ and refused to send convicted criminals there, citing its chronic understaffing, extended use of solitary confinement, unsanitary conditions, routine power outages, and lack of access to medical care and legal counsel.  

 

Last week, the Congressman sent an oversight letter of inquiry to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) demanding answers on their interagency agreement with ICE to house more than 100 immigration detainees at the Brooklyn MDC. 

 

 

Rep. Dan Goldman:  Thank you all for joining us today. I’m Congressman Dan Goldman, and I'm here with my colleagues in the State Senate and State Assembly, Andrew Gounardes and Bobby Carroll, as well as our friends from Mixteca.  

 

We are here to bring attention to what is an increasingly urgent and dangerous situation now that relates entirely to the militarized ICE efforts to arrest immigrants who are here lawfully, and to whisk them down south for expedited deportation. That would break the law. 

 

One of the things that this new policy has done is create a shortage of places to hold these non-criminal, nonviolent civilians who are trying to immigrate to this country, as so many have before. So what we have learned is that ICE and the federal government, in coordination with the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons, are relocating immigration detainees here to MDC. 

 

Now, this is not the first time we've been out in front of the MDC, which has a very well-established record of being incredibly unsafe, inhumane, cruel – even to the point where federal judges call the conditions in the MDC barbaric and have refused to send convicts and criminals here because those conditions are so bad. And yet the Trump Administration is now sending non-criminal, non-charged, nonviolent immigrants, many of whom have ongoing asylum cases, to be detained in this place where federal judges will not send convicted criminals. 

 

They're doing this because there is no room anywhere else for this disgusting mass deportation policy that once again, is not targeting convicted criminals, but is targeting so many community members, spouses of citizens, parents of citizens, people trying to immigrate to this country to pursue the American dream and trying to do it the right way under the law.  

 

Last week, I wrote a letter to the head of the Bureau of Prisons demanding answers and asking for an immediate suspension of all transfers of ICE detainees to the MDC and to any other federal prison. And to understand what exactly the agreement is between ICE and the Bureau of Prisons. Who is paying for the staffing for these ICE detainees?  

 

Part of the reason why the MDC has been in such terrible, terrible condition is that it is grossly understaffed. And because it's understaffed, it is unable to keep everyone safe. It has required numerous lockdowns just simply because of a shortage of staffing. 

 

The Biden Administration added a 35% retention bonus at the end of that administration, to increase the staffing significantly here and made the conditions much better. When Donald Trump came in, his administration yanked that retention bonus, and staffing has now gone down.  

 

So, who's paying? Because the Bureau of Prisons doesn't have money to pay for its own staff, for its own detainees, much less ICE detainees? 

 

We want answers to those questions, and we want to know where the money will be coming from now that the Republicans jammed through a bill that takes health care and food benefits from millions and millions of Americans, but increases ICE's budget for detention by $45 billion.  

 

Who is going to pay for this? This is just yet another example of ICE's lawless, un-American, inhumane treatment of people trying to seek the American dream, trying to immigrate to this country like so many of New Yorkers have – 40% – and so many of our ancestors and descendants have. This is dangerous. It's lawless and it's unacceptable. So we are here out in front of the MDC to demand answers from the Bureau of Prisons, from the Department of Justice, from the Department of Homeland Security. They owe us answers. They owe me, as a member of Congress, answers as I conduct oversight, both constitutionally authorized and statutorily obligated oversight. 

 

But they mostly owe answers to New Yorkers and to the American people for what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it.  

 

Let's remember. Immigrants are our neighbors. They are parents, they are workers working here with work authorization, paying taxes, paying into the Social Security fund, and they are community members who deserve to be treated with dignity. 

 

If immigrants have committed a crime, they should be deported. But that is not what is happening. These are our community members being yanked from their families, unsuspectingly and deceptively. And it must stop.