New Jersey County Jails Releasing Inmates Who May Be Eligible for Deportation Despite US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detainer Requests

Some of New Jersey's county jails are avoiding civil rights lawsuits by releasing inmates who may be eligible for deportation.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not happy with the decision, although New Jersey's county jails are facing threats of legal action from civil liberties groups, Fox News Latino reports.

"When serious criminal offenders are released to the streets in a community, rather than to ICE custody, it undermines ICE's ability to protect public safety and impedes us from enforcing the nation's immigration laws," Harold Ort, a spokesman for New Jersey ICE, said, according to NJ.com.

Ort added that "jurisdictions that ignore detainers bear the risk of possible public safety risks," referring to inmates being released before ICE gets the chance to pick them up.

Usually, ICE issues a request that county jails hold people facing deportation for at least 48 hours before being released to ICE custody.

New Jersey jails continued to honor ICE requests until the American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of Ernesto Galarza, who was arrested and held in a Pennsylvania county jail for three days. The Puerto Rican man was sent to the jail by an ICE request in March, but investigations later determined that he was a U.S. citizen.

After the Galarza case, the ACLU said that counties may face costly lawsuits if they continue to honor ICE's detainer requests.

"Should an individual who has been wrongfully detained in your jail on the basis of an immigration detainer seek our assistance, the ACLU of New Jersey is prepared to pursue legal action to vindicate his or her rights," the organization wrote in an 11-page letter.

According to ACLU reports, ICE issued about 6,000 detainer requests to New Jersey county jails between October 2011 and August 2013. It is unclear how many detainer requests are currently not being honored in New Jersey, but several jails are refusing, including Camden County Jail.

The warden of the Camden County Jail, David Owens, said that he will give ICE a 24-hour notice before an inmate is released.

"We will do what the 3rd Circuit tells us to do," he said. "I will obey the law."

Camden Country Jail usually has about five detainer requests per week.