TOWN OF NEWBURGH – Hundreds of people protested outside Newburgh Town Hall Monday afternoon to fight the rumored Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) detention center in the Town of Newburgh.
Right after the protest, which was organized by a long list of community groups, the town board voted unanimously to oppose the facility if, indeed, it is to be used as a processing or detention center.
“We want to do the same thing we did in Chester and get the word out and have people pressuring their local state and federal officials to prevent this from coming to our community and also to completely abolish ICE eventually,” said Grace Ott, co-chair of the immigrant solidarity working group for the Mid-Hudson Valley Democratic Socialists of America.
The Newburgh town board is actively pursuing legal action and additional measures to block the development of a warehouse at 800 Corporate Boulevard off Route 17K.
Protest organizers say a resolution is just not enough.
“We want to make clear that a resolution means nothing if they’re not actually going to use whatever tools they have–permitting, public disclosure and information and zoning to actually stop this from coming to Newburgh.”
A notice recently published by the federal General Services Administration announced that ICE has signed a 15-year, $35.6 million lease with a Texas-based company to rent that space.
The Department of Homeland Security will not confirm the future of the Corporate Boulevard site because they say ICE officers are facing a “coordinated campaign of violence.”
At the heart of this issue are the stories of those families that are forever changed by the Trump Administration’s mass deportation plan.
“My husband was detained by ICE in the City of Newburgh and taken to the Orange County Jail facility where he was eventually deported without a hearing, without anything,” said Desiree Osorio, a member of For the Many, a grassroots organization that fights for social justice. “They intimidated him into signing a paper that said that he wanted to be out of the country. My husband was our main support, and we have two children with disabilities who now only have me, and that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m fighting. Something has to change.”
Osorio said that once her husband was deported to Mexico, he was kidnapped, and her family had to pay a ransom to have him freed.
“We’re being taken away from here, and we’re being taken away on the other side as well. And still my family is not together, and I have to tell my children why their dad is not home.”
“There is no reason to treat people this way. We were built on a nation of immigrants. We are all immigrants, and what’s happening is inhumane, cruel and there’s no reason for it,” said Melissa Cioffi of Poughkeepsie. “People in these detention centers are being starved, deprived of basic human rights, no bathrooms, no running water. They’re being detained without due process—some are detained while they’re here legally. It’s disgusting.”
Earlier this year, ICE officials pulled back on plans to use the former Pep Boys distribution facility in Chester to expand detention space after lawmakers and residents mobilized against the plan.
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