GOSHEN – For years the Orange County Jail in Goshen filled excess inmate capacity with federal immigration detainees and in the process made millions of dollars to house them.
The sheriff’s office is now reducing that number for several reasons, said Undersheriff Kenneth Jones.
“ICE has more capacity than they used to have for their own facilities. Our manpower is at levels such that we can’t have as many as we used to have,” he said. “We had a civil service test and we were hoping to fill our vacancies, but it didn’t turn out that way; we ended up with eight or 10.”
Jones said the jail has 29 corrections officer vacancies, which taxes current officers.
Off-the-job long-term sick leave has also taxed the manpower levels and the department has been “under assault by advocate groups that are sucking up a lot of time in law.”
Jones said they ‘just reduced to a more manageable level.”
The undersheriff couldn’t say offhand how many ICE detainees were housed at the jail and how many were being relocated.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the advocacy group New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, said to transfer detainees “to unknown locations outside of the New York City area, without any prior notice to detained people’s families or legal counsel, is reckless and unsafe.”
