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N.J. numbers surged after the Delaney Hall detention center opened in Newark, while Pa. figures have increased for six straight months.
A Special Response Team (SRT) with Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrives at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility during a protest over federal immigration enforcement raids on Thursday,
The number of individuals arrested and held in New Jersey and Pennsylvania detention centers pending deportation hearings has risen to levels not seen since the early years of the Obama presidency, according to recently released government data.
The detained population in New Jersey surged 451% since the end of April, when only 65 newly arrested individuals were detained while awaiting deportation hearings. Pennsylvania’s detained population crossed the 300 mark in March for the first time since 2011.
As of May 31, ICE held 358 and 353 people, respectively, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania detention facilities who were detained that month as their deportation cases wound their way through immigration court.
New Jersey’s figure represents the highest number of such detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 14 years while Pennsylvania’s is the highest in 16.
The figures reflect the number of individuals detained in a given month pending removal proceedings who remain in detention at the end of the month in which they were detained. They are an undercount of detained individuals as they do not include people in so-called “expedited removal,” a process by which immigration officers can deport noncitizens from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge.
President Donald Trump expanded the use of expedited removals upon returning to office.
The figures were published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data gathering and research organization that regularly acquires and analyzes such data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and ICE through Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation.
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