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