Nassau jail has held nearly 2,200 ICE detainees since February, new data shows

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Nassau authorities have held 2,188 ICE detainees in an East Meadow jail since February, data obtained by Newsday shows.

Nassau has been holding several hundred ICE detainees per month as part of an agreement ICE struck in February with Nassau County, which has rented out 50 local jail cells in East Meadow. Newsday reported over the summer that some 1,400 detainees had been processed and held at the facility since the start of the deal.

As part of the deal, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman also assigned 10 Nassau police detectives to cross-embed with ICE, which gave them the power to arrest immigrants without legal status.

But Blakeman revealed Monday that while those 10 detectives have been trained by ICE, they have not been deployed.

"I guess they don’t need us right now," he said.

ICE did not respond to an inquiry about why the agency had not deployed the 10 detectives.

If deployed, the assigned detectives would work with ICE on top of their regular duties, according to Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Blakeman. The federal government would reimburse the police department at an hourly rate for any immigration-related work, he said.

The federal government also reimburses the county for use of the East Meadow jail at a nightly rate of $195 per ICE detainee.

The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing Nassau, its police department and police Commissioner Patrick Ryder over the program, claiming it violates state law. While ICE agents can arrest people for living in the country after entering illegally, which is a civil violation rather than a crime, New York State law prohibits local police from doing so.

"Despite what Bruce Blakeman and the Trump administration may think, it is illegal for New York law enforcement to detain someone on behalf of ICE," Amy Belsher, director of immigrants rights litigation at the NYCLU, wrote in a statement to Newsday earlier this year.

"While officers have many well-defined, specific powers, detaining immigrants at the request of ICE is not one of them," she wrote.

The NYCLU has asked for an injunction to block the program and is waiting for a judge to respond, a spokeswoman for the organization said.

Santos Banegas Reyes, a construction worker living in Hempstead, died in Nassau jail custody last month. ICE has said the 42-year-old father of two died of apparent liver failure. His family maintains he was healthy and is demanding a full explanation of what happened.

"How could he die so quickly? That is absurd," his sister, who did not want her name used for fear of repercussions, previously told Newsday in Spanish.

Local and federal officials said they are investigating the death.

The number of people who have died in ICE custody across the United States has nearly doubled since last year. At least 19 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, up from 11 last year, according to news releases from the federal agency.

ICE agents have arrested more than 1,600 people on Long Island with prior convictions from January through August, the agency previously said. ICE would not answer questions about how many people they have arrested without a criminal history, but Newsday has reported on several such cases: A bagel store manager in Port Washington, a Suffolk County Community College student, an ROTC high school senior in Central Islip and a Brentwood mother of five.

Nassau police transferred 15 people in federal custody between January and July, all of whom were arrested for nonviolent, low-level offenses, according to data analyzed by Newsday.