Dear Editor:
I am disappointed to read that Hudson County ended the partnership program with ICE. So instead of notifying ICE when an illegal criminal leaves the county jail, the county now allows these formerly incarnated people the right to return to the community. I am sure that privilege is not given to American citizens who face jurisdictions in other parts of this country; they don’t get a free pass to return to the community but instead are turned over to face justice elsewhere.
Besides showing discrimination to American citizens in the penal system, what the freeholders did is now very dangerous. It is safer for ICE agents to collect criminals from the Hudson County jail instead of going into the community and do raids. These are not choir boys; they committed crimes that put them in the county jail in the first place. The freeholders have put ICE agents as well as the community in jeopardy.
Here is the irony, California, now a sanctuary state does not allow ICE to have access to criminals, too. That does not stop ICE from doing their job. They make raids and scopes up everyone they find in a particular building. They are collecting the criminal as well as the non-criminal illegal immigrants. Does ICE release the non-criminal immigrants? Of course not, after all, coming here illegally is still a crime.
Yvonne Balcer
