Debate over a controversial U.S.\u00a0Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center proposed in Orange County continues after the agency revealed details about their plan.<\/p>\n
Elected officials from the local to federal levels say\u00a0they’ve had no direct communication with ICE or federal officials around the proposed village of Chester detention center to be built from an abandoned warehouse.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The agency did send out a release\u00a0but some of the language was unclear. It said, in part, that the facility was purchased, but later said that a review of community impact will be done before purchase.<\/p>\n
Republican Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus has described the proposal as something that would \u201ccreate chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not had one elected official in New York state, in the Hudson Valley, in Orange County call me and say they’re for this,” Neuhaus said. “Every Republican, my legislature, my partners there voted 21 to 0 last week against this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0release from ICE also claims this would contribute over $150 million in GDP and bring in $37.2 million in tax revenue.<\/p>\n
Town of Chester Supervisor Brandon Holdridge pushed back on the validity of the numbers, saying federal buildings don\u2019t pay property taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[ICE] has yet to talk to us about anything,” Holdridge said. “They haven’t shown us any documentation proving any of these wild claims. I can’t imagine if a prison is being put in my community that property values are going to go up. I have to imagine they’re going to go down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The full statement released by ICE reads as follows:<\/p>\n
“ICE\u00a0purchased\u00a0a facility in Chester, New York. These will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase. The Chester facility and its construction are expected to bring more than\u00a01,246 jobs\u00a0to the area and would contribute $153.4 million\u00a0to GDP. It\u2019s also projected to bring in\u00a0more than $37.2\u00a0million in tax revenue. These economic benefits don\u2019t even take into account that removing criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers. ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and more. 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE has new funding to expand detention space to keep these criminals off American streets before they are removed for good from our communities.”<\/p>\n
Spectrum News 1 has reached out to ICE regarding the claims and concerns over clarity in this release but did not immediately receive a response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Debate over a controversial U.S.\u00a0Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center proposed in Orange County continues after the agency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,199,2301,17905,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,87,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-136746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-hudson-valley","10":"tag-immigration","11":"tag-john-camera","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}