Tonight, a major decision awaits Erie County as council members consider ending the county prison’s contract with ICE. Supporters argue that the county should not rely on federal immigration detention as a source of revenue and say the issue goes beyond finances.<\/p>\n
Erie County Council is set to consider whether to end the agreement that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to house detainees at the Erie County Prison.<\/p>\n
The proposed ordinance would terminate the county’s current contract. Supporters argue the county should not rely on immigration detention as a revenue source, while others say the financial impact must be carefully considered.<\/p>\n
County Councilman Jim Wertz explains \u201cThe question is who\u2019s moving through there? These folks are generally held for very short times, and as we\u2019ve seen more recently, there is a kind of shuttle of immigration enforcement where they’re moving people around the country, and we choose not to be a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
County Councilman Jim Wertz explains that these ordinances are not new and counties across the country are holding similar meetings.<\/p>\n
Council members are weighing both the ethical considerations and the potential budget implications if the contract is ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw citizens and legal immigrants being swept up in these enforcement efforts, as some described them as unconstitutional, and we would like to distance ourselves in our county from those operations. This is an effort to both measure and ensure the trust of our community.\u201d County Councilman Jim Wertz explains<\/p>\n
If the vote passes, it will then be sent to the county executive to re-engage the contract with the U.S. Marshals. If the vote does not pass, council members will take another look at how to build consensus around the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonight, a major decision awaits Erie County as council members consider ending the county prison’s contract with ICE.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[9363,136,142,138,137,2443,50471,743],"class_list":["post-124610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-county-council","tag-erie","tag-erie-county","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-ice","tag-immigration-detention","tag-u-s-immigration-and-customs-enforcement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}