On Oct. 25, immigration detainee Mamadou Bah escaped from Delaney Hall, a private detention facility in Newark, NJ, which was holding 120 immigration detainees under contract with the federal government. Essex County corrections director Scott Faunce would not comment on how Bah was able to get out of the facility. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson in Newark Harold Ort said Bah had been turned over to the immigration agency after being convicted of fraud in Essex County, and that he was picked up by an ICE fugitive unit in Kentucky four days after his escape. Ort declined to disclose Bah's country of origin.

Essex County officials have moved the remaining immigration detainees to the county jail and will keep them there while investigators from the county and ICE review the circumstances of the escape. Delaney Hall began taking federal detainees earlier this year under contract with ICE and the US Marshals Service, which pay the facility $105 a day for each detainee, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. (Star-Ledger, Nov. 2)

From Immigration News Briefs, Nov. 16

See our last posts on the politics of immigration and the struggle in New Jersey.