Introducción en español aquí. El resto del documento es bilingüe.

While New York prides itself as a safe, welcoming space for immigrants, the state is still in business with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to tear apart New York families. On any given night, hundreds of immigrants are detained by ICE in New York county jails and state prisons, subjected to ICE’s abuses, inhumane conditions, as well as indefinite family separation. This is possible for two reasons: ICE needs detention facilities to cage immigrants and New York allows state agencies and private entities to contract with ICE to meet that need. Disturbingly, several counties in New York generate revenue from these ICE contracts while also expending finite local resources to provide substandard medical care, unsanitary food and water, and overtime wages for understaffed detention facilities. ICE is also constantly seeking to expand its detention capacity in New York state.

We can end the inhumane caging of our community members. 

To do so, we need your support in passing the Dignity Not Detention Act.

What the Dignity Not Detention Act will do:

• Prohibit any person or entity in the state of New York from owning or operating immigrant detention facilities (i.e. state prisons, county jails, hospitals).

• Prohibit any entity in New York from entering into new immigrant detention contracts and from receiving any payments related to immigrant detention.

• Prohibit any entity in New York from renewing any existing immigrant detention contracts.

• Require any governmental entities in New York with existing immigrant detention contracts to exercise the termination provision in the contract.

What Dignity Not Detention will mean for New Yorkers:

• Keeps New York families and communities together. By stopping ICE’s ability to detain people in New York, we will end the state’s harmful and traumatic practice of tearing loved ones away from each other.

• Protects people from harm and abuse. Detention facilities, as with prisons and jails more broadly, are notoriously inhumane. Detained people regularly experience racist harassment and abuse from guards and staff as well as unsanitary water, inadequate food, and medical neglect, resulting in long-term trauma and disability in immigrant communities. New York must divest from ICE detention to keep New York communities healthy and safe.

• Maintains New York’s commitment to protecting immigrant communities. By stopping ICE from caging immigrant New Yorkers statewide, the Dignity Not Detention Act will put into practice the state’s values of protecting immigrant communities from family separation and its long-term, traumatic impact within New York communities.

• Strengthens New York’s commitment to racial justice. Immigrant detention targets Black and Latiné communities. By ending its contracts with ICE, New York will defend and support Black and Latiné communities who are constantly threatened with anti-Black, anti-immigrant violence perpetuated by right-wing extremists and their enablers.