Immigration advocates are decrying a unilateral decision by ICE to transfer detained immigrant New Yorkers from the Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen to unknown locations without notice to their families or legal counsel.

A statement from The Bronx Defenders, The Legal Aid Society, and Brooklyn Defenders – New York City’s defender organizations providing free legal representation to detained immigrants through the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) – characterized the transfers as “reckless and unsafe.”

“Despite well-documented evidence that ICE’s practice of transferring detained people worsened COVID-19 outbreaks within the receiving detention facilities and their surrounding communities, ICE has chosen to risk countless lives to maintain a cruel and unfair detention system that should not exist,” reads a statement from the organizations. “This decision to transfer detained immigrant New Yorkers to unknown locations is even more shocking as New York State leads in Monkeypox cases in the United States and the World Health Organization recently declared the Monkeypox outbreak a global health emergency.”

NYIFUP demanded ICE stop the transfers, and release detained immigrant New Yorkers to their families where they can access the care and community support that ICE is incapable of providing to those they detain.