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Usually up to 20 detainees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement are held in state prisons on a given day, sometimes more.
By Charlotte Oliver, for the Community News Service
State leaders are considering how President Donald Trump’s plans to deport undocumented immigrants in mass numbers could strain the state’s already stressed and backlogged prison system.
If immigration authorities begin a “rounding up of folks,” people awaiting deportation would be temporarily housed in state prisons, Rep. Alice Emmons, D-Springfield, told the House Corrections and Institutions committee Jan. 21.
That would place further pressure on facilities already struggling to house Vermonters who are sentenced or detained, said Emmons, the committee’s chair.
“Where do we house our folks who are incarcerated?” she asked.
The discussion came as the new presidential administration spurred a surge of immigration raids nationwide — and as the Department of Corrections highlighted its challenges finding beds for people.
The department is trying to manage and house a record number of detainees — people held but not yet sentenced to prison terms. That number has steadily climbed over the last two years as a result of backlogged cases, according to the department.
The meeting came a day after Trump terminated the ability for undocumented migrants to arrange asylum appointments and other immigration processes on a federal app. Since then Trump has signed the Laken Riley Act, which requires undocumented people accused of a variety of crimes to be detained.
Usually up to 20 detainees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement are held in state prisons on a given day, said Haley Sommer, director of communications and legislative affairs for the Department of Corrections, in an email after the committee meeting.
The department usually holds people detained on immigration violations for about 72 hours before they’re handed over to federal authorities, Sommer said. While in the state system, male detainees are usually held in Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, while female detainees are held in Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, according to the department.
Northwest State Correctional “definitely doesn’t have enough space” for detainees already, Joshua Rutherford, operations director for the department, told legislators in the Jan. 21 meeting. He explained the large volume of detainees from Chittenden County stresses the facility.
State prisons for the last two years have had a high number of overall detainees awaiting sentencing, Chief Superior Court Judge Thomas Zonay said in the meeting. The trend is caused by a backlog in cases across the state’s court system, he said. Zonay presented state data showing that detainees currently make up about a third of Vermont’s incarcerated population.
Detained Vermonters awaiting court, who have not been convicted of a crime, are housed among people serving a sentence. “To mix those two populations is not the healthiest for a system,” Emmons said in the meeting. Vermont differs from many other states, which separate the two populations.
Infrastructure also restricts the state’s prison capacity. The state’s largest facilities are on the east side of the state, while the most crimes are committed on the west side of the state, Rutherford said.
Last year an average 135% of male general population beds were in use statewide, according to department data. The American Correctional Association, according to state officials, recommends no higher than 85%. In his testimony Zonay called crowding one of the biggest risk factors for major incidents, noting it’s something facilities work to avoid by moving people around.
Emmons, the committee chair, said an increase in housing immigration detainees would put more pressure on how the state houses incarcerated people.
“We cannot yet speak to what an increase in ICE detentions would mean for DOC, as the implications of President Trump’s immigration-related executive orders are not yet clear,” said Sommer in an email to Community News Service.
Emmons added that changes in federal immigration policy might alter how incarcerated Vermonters are housed in out-of-state prisons. The state currently contracts CoreCivic, a company that owns and manages private prisons, to send select Vermonters to prisons in Mississippi.
The housing arrangements for Vermonters in Mississippi could change depending on that company’s arrangements with federal authorities, Emmons said. According to the department, 114 incarcerated people from Vermont are currently serving time in Mississippi.
“We are going to have to deal with this one way or the other, and that will put pressure on our beds,” said Emmons.
Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
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Categories: Border, Corrections
When Vermont became a sanctuary state, for ILLEGAL immigrants, that broke the law, this is part of the outcome. Rather than waste millions of dollars on the Green New Deal, plus continuing with the liberal criminal justice system, deportation is the most sensible course.
The benefits given to illegal additions to our population alone is a burden on the taxpayers. The increased taxes to cover this is nothing less than robbery from folks who are law abiding.
The so called “housing crisis “ that the legislature speaks of is driven by an influx of over 12 million people. For those who see this opinion as right wing supremacy, maybe we should house them next door to you. Crime has risen, safety is at risk and common sense has been thrown to the wind.
On top of that, the media continues to blame Trump when Biden is to blame
Before stones are tossed in my direction, both maternal and paternal grandparents came through Ellis Island and I grew up hearing the stories about learning to speak English and going to night school to become citizens.
Justice, law, order, and public safety are the priority, not the myriads of excuses for why we can’t enforce the laws illegal entrants to our country have the audacity to violate.
For crying out loud, if our government can subsidize the aborting hundreds of thousands of babies each year, it can darn well afford to build more prisons, or at least pay to remove the illegal aliens from our communities ASAP.
Excuses for allowing injustice anywhere is an excuse for allowing it everywhere.
The new presidential administration and Tom Homan clearly recognize this imperative and have the determination and the courage to carry it out.
Put them on a plane, send them home, the USA isn’t it ………………………………….
Doubling up in cells wont make them any more claustrophobic than hiding in a tractor trailer or trunk of a car like when they entered the US. See how cozy the prisons are in El Salvador these days…it’s just a matter of priorities when we voted nationwide to value the safety and security of our own citizens over that of criminal migrants, many with gang affiliations. Their comfort while under detention while their cases are being dealt with is not a concern worth agonizing over except in the legacy media, public broadcasting and Jimmy Kimmel.
Put em’ in the state house while they are waiting for deportation. Put them with our representatives who voted for sanctuary cities…….maybe they could all be deported.
Open windsor back up