This summary was featured in Documented’s Early Arrival newsletter. You can subscribe to receive it in your inbox three times per week here.
The New York City Council Immigration Committee will hold a virtual hearing on Monday, Feb. 28, at 10 a.m., regarding a complaint about abuse and unsafe conditions at the Orange County Jail in Goshen, New York, that advocacy groups filed with DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. There will be testimony from state elected officials, including State Sen. Julia Salazar, as well as immigrants detained at the facility. The chair of the committee, City Council Member Shahana Hanif, has also requested that jail officials testify so they can be questioned under oath about disturbing reports of abuse and outbreaks of COVID-19 in the facility.
Documented recently reported on the complaint from immigration advocacy groups, which included firsthand accounts from ten detained immigrants. Since then, two officers at the correctional facility have been moved out of a detainee unit. Details of the transfers were included a Feb. 23 letter from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams.
In other local immigration news…
ICE Ditching Asylum Seekers at Rural Gas Station
📍Documented Original
Thousands of migrants have been sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails located far from their final destinations in the United States. When they’re released at ICE’s discretion, migrants are often left without enough resources to make it on their own, and can’t always communicate with local groups that can provide aid. The situation can become perilous, particularly in the dead of winter.
Documented’s Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio took an exclusive deep dive into the case of 29-year-old Cristian Enmanuel Sánchez Martínez, an immigrant from Nicaragua, and others who were left at a gas station in Batavia, New York, on a chilly 34-degree morning. Some immigrants hadn’t eaten since the day before, and most didn’t have functioning phones, had only limited amounts of cash, and had little to no comprehension of English.
After ICE dropped him off, Sánchez Martínez had to travel across the country to his final destination, spending full days and nights on various buses. He rode buses through six states, starting in New York and eventually arriving in Florida. Read an update on his case on Documented
