danielle
12-26-2002, 11:20 PM
Posted on Thu, Dec. 26, 2002
Immigration jail may close over contract dispute
BY THOMAS GINSBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers
YORK, Pa. - (KRT) - The biggest immigration jail east of the Mississippi River, with 700 inmates and dozens of workers in rural Pennsylvania, could be shut down early next year because of a contract dispute with local officials.
The York County Prison has leased cells, office space and courtrooms to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for more than a decade. But that may end as a result of a two-year disagreement over INS reimbursement rates, a dispute that boiled over Friday.
Exasperated by an INS demand for a 20 percent rate cut and facing a budget deadline, the York County commissioners submitted their 60-day notice to cancel the contract. If there is no resolution, the INS and its detainees will be ejected Feb. 18.
"This is idiocy of the most supreme magnitude," said Christopher B. Reilly, president of the York County Board of Commissioners. "If somebody in Washington comes to their senses and wants to do the right thing, we'll listen. But ... if they don't want to pay, we will part company."
An INS spokesman, Michael Gilhooly, said that talks were continuing and that the INS hoped to keep its key facility in York, about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
"They're a highly professional and solid organization. We can't say enough good about them," Gilhooly said of the York prison. "We won't discuss contract issues (in public), but we're continuing to talk with York."
Immigration lawyers, advocacy groups, and local INS staffers blasted the money-saving effort as a shortsighted move that may end up costing the federal government more money.
Ted Nordmark, assistant district director of the Philadelphia INS office, said local officials "plan to start moving people out in the second week of January if there is no resolution."
Detainees could be relocated wherever space is available nationwide, officials said. The INS is allowed to move detainees anywhere in the country, often without notice or regardless of distance from family and lawyers.
The sprawling facility's INS detainees come from Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Baltimore and elsewhere, and include anybody from simple visa over-stayers to convicted felons awaiting deportation. After Sept. 11, the York facility sent buses to New York to pick up and briefly hold about 130 detainees trapped in a station near the demolished World Trade Center.
The issue underlying the dispute is a federal policy that may prohibit local governments from making a profit on federal contracts, officials said.
For the past three years, York County has received $60 a day for each INS inmate housed at its prison. The rate covers guards, food, transport, rent on court facilities, and repayments on York County's $19 million bond to renovate the prison for the INS in the 1990s, Reilly said.
The $60 fee also includes a profit margin for York County. Its direct prison costs are about $12 million a year, and it receives about $17 million from the INS, a margin that has helped it avoid increasing its local property taxes in recent years, Reilly said.
"We've realized about $90 million over the years that would have come from property taxes," Reilly said. "The contract has been enormously beneficial for us."
But federal auditors balked at the rate. In 2000, the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees the INS, demanded that York County lower its rate to $38, strictly in line with prison costs, and demanded that the county pay back about $6 million it collected in 2000.
After a year of negotiation, the INS raised its rate offer to $48. But the York commissioners said they still could accept nothing less than $60, and they voted to look for another tenant, such as a work-release program.
"We get along quite well with the (local INS) operations folks," said Thomas H. Hogan, the prison warden. "They are of the opinion that this arrangement is very beneficial for them, but this decision is not being made by them."
York's rate is less than the current national average of $75, mostly paid to local and county governments for holding about 20,000 INS detainees on any particular day, according to local and national INS officials.
York's fee is also less than the INS rate currently paid to several other jails in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, where York inmates might be relocated. Other rates range from $59 in Berks County, Pa., to $163 in Elizabeth, N.J., to $225 in Queens, N.Y.
"This makes no sense," said Stephen Converse, a York-based lawyer with many clients at the prison. "Whether the county is charging $12 too much per person or not, it's still much less than somewhere else."
The immigration lawyer, and several others, called the federal contracting policy hypocritical.
"Why they aren't allowed to make a profit, I don't know. Lockheed Martin and Boeing certainly make a profit," Converse said.
Lorna Kralik, director of the York-based Pennsylvania Immigrant Resource Center, a legal-services group, said that relocating the facility would undo years of work. INS and prison officials now hold regular meetings with area advocacy groups. Kralik's group hopes to start offering free consultation to new detainees, most of whom arrive without a lawyer or even a knowledge of English.
"If the negotiations don't continue and the INS pulls out, that all goes up in smoke," Kralik said.
York County also could suffer. At least 95 prison employees could be laid off. The commissioners already voted to raise local taxes by about a third to cover the anticipated loss of revenue, Reilly said.
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© 2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Immigration jail may close over contract dispute
BY THOMAS GINSBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers
YORK, Pa. - (KRT) - The biggest immigration jail east of the Mississippi River, with 700 inmates and dozens of workers in rural Pennsylvania, could be shut down early next year because of a contract dispute with local officials.
The York County Prison has leased cells, office space and courtrooms to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service for more than a decade. But that may end as a result of a two-year disagreement over INS reimbursement rates, a dispute that boiled over Friday.
Exasperated by an INS demand for a 20 percent rate cut and facing a budget deadline, the York County commissioners submitted their 60-day notice to cancel the contract. If there is no resolution, the INS and its detainees will be ejected Feb. 18.
"This is idiocy of the most supreme magnitude," said Christopher B. Reilly, president of the York County Board of Commissioners. "If somebody in Washington comes to their senses and wants to do the right thing, we'll listen. But ... if they don't want to pay, we will part company."
An INS spokesman, Michael Gilhooly, said that talks were continuing and that the INS hoped to keep its key facility in York, about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
"They're a highly professional and solid organization. We can't say enough good about them," Gilhooly said of the York prison. "We won't discuss contract issues (in public), but we're continuing to talk with York."
Immigration lawyers, advocacy groups, and local INS staffers blasted the money-saving effort as a shortsighted move that may end up costing the federal government more money.
Ted Nordmark, assistant district director of the Philadelphia INS office, said local officials "plan to start moving people out in the second week of January if there is no resolution."
Detainees could be relocated wherever space is available nationwide, officials said. The INS is allowed to move detainees anywhere in the country, often without notice or regardless of distance from family and lawyers.
The sprawling facility's INS detainees come from Philadelphia, New York, Washington, Baltimore and elsewhere, and include anybody from simple visa over-stayers to convicted felons awaiting deportation. After Sept. 11, the York facility sent buses to New York to pick up and briefly hold about 130 detainees trapped in a station near the demolished World Trade Center.
The issue underlying the dispute is a federal policy that may prohibit local governments from making a profit on federal contracts, officials said.
For the past three years, York County has received $60 a day for each INS inmate housed at its prison. The rate covers guards, food, transport, rent on court facilities, and repayments on York County's $19 million bond to renovate the prison for the INS in the 1990s, Reilly said.
The $60 fee also includes a profit margin for York County. Its direct prison costs are about $12 million a year, and it receives about $17 million from the INS, a margin that has helped it avoid increasing its local property taxes in recent years, Reilly said.
"We've realized about $90 million over the years that would have come from property taxes," Reilly said. "The contract has been enormously beneficial for us."
But federal auditors balked at the rate. In 2000, the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees the INS, demanded that York County lower its rate to $38, strictly in line with prison costs, and demanded that the county pay back about $6 million it collected in 2000.
After a year of negotiation, the INS raised its rate offer to $48. But the York commissioners said they still could accept nothing less than $60, and they voted to look for another tenant, such as a work-release program.
"We get along quite well with the (local INS) operations folks," said Thomas H. Hogan, the prison warden. "They are of the opinion that this arrangement is very beneficial for them, but this decision is not being made by them."
York's rate is less than the current national average of $75, mostly paid to local and county governments for holding about 20,000 INS detainees on any particular day, according to local and national INS officials.
York's fee is also less than the INS rate currently paid to several other jails in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, where York inmates might be relocated. Other rates range from $59 in Berks County, Pa., to $163 in Elizabeth, N.J., to $225 in Queens, N.Y.
"This makes no sense," said Stephen Converse, a York-based lawyer with many clients at the prison. "Whether the county is charging $12 too much per person or not, it's still much less than somewhere else."
The immigration lawyer, and several others, called the federal contracting policy hypocritical.
"Why they aren't allowed to make a profit, I don't know. Lockheed Martin and Boeing certainly make a profit," Converse said.
Lorna Kralik, director of the York-based Pennsylvania Immigrant Resource Center, a legal-services group, said that relocating the facility would undo years of work. INS and prison officials now hold regular meetings with area advocacy groups. Kralik's group hopes to start offering free consultation to new detainees, most of whom arrive without a lawyer or even a knowledge of English.
"If the negotiations don't continue and the INS pulls out, that all goes up in smoke," Kralik said.
York County also could suffer. At least 95 prison employees could be laid off. The commissioners already voted to raise local taxes by about a third to cover the anticipated loss of revenue, Reilly said.
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© 2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.