NYC NOW - April 25, 2024: Morning Headlines

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Get up and get informed! Here’s all the local news you need to start your day: Governor Hochul expresses support for Columbia University leadership amid ongoing Israel-Palestine protests. Meanwhile, data from the New York City Council show far more claims of sexual assault are made by detainees at Rikers Island than are ultimately reported under federal law. Also, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is out with his executive budget plan. Plus, private prison companies are trying to convince federal courts to overturn a ban on immigration detention facilities in New Jersey as the Biden Administration looks for facilities to hold immigrants it wants to deport. WNYC’s Matt Katz has the latest.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Thursday, April 25th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. New York Governor Kathy Hokel is expressing support for Columbia University saying she believes the school is doing what's necessary to de-escalate the protest Royland on the campus. I want to make sure that we get the results we need, which is make sure that every student on campus, every student,

feel safe and secure, and I believe that is the path that they're attempting to be on. Governor Hockel says House Speaker Mike Johnson's visit to Columbia yesterday and his call for the University President to resign could further Stoke Division. Data from the New York City Council show far more claims of sexual assault made by detainees at Rikers Island than are ultimately reported under federal law. WNIC's Matt Katz reports. At a city council hearing on Wednesday, Council member Sandy Nurse said that of the nearly 1,400 sexual sexual

assault and harassment grievances filed over a one-year period, just 246 were reported to federal authorities. And she questioned correction officials about the wide discrepancy. These issues weren't unknown. They've just been unaddressed. Her questioning was spurred in part by a WNYC investigation into more than 700 lawsuits recently filed by former detainees, alleging sexual assault by jail staff. Correction officials said all allegations are investigated, but that some incidents do not meet the threshold for being reported. Mayor Adams is out with his executive budget plan as talks with the city council heat up before July deadline. W&MIC's Julia Hayward has more. Adams' latest spending plan partially reverses plan cuts to policing, early childhood education, sanitation, and the fire department, but keeps them in place for the city's libraries.

The heads of the city's three library systems say that could lead to most branches only being open for five days a week. New Yorkers already lack Universal's seven-day library service due to previous cuts. The mayor's $112 billion proposal includes $58 million in cuts for the city's next fiscal year. The spending plan now heads to the city council for review, with negotiations expected over the next two months. 44 with some clouds out there now, sunny and cooling off to the mid-50s for a high today with a light wind, clear in Chile tonight in the city down to 42. Then tomorrow's sunny and 60 in the city, Saturday party, sunny and 61, warmer on Sunday. Stay close. There's more after the break.

You're listening on WNYC in New York. I'm Sean Carlson. Private prison companies are trying to convince federal courts to overturn a ban on immigration detention facilities in New Jersey. That is because the Biden administration is looking for new facilities around New Jersey to hold immigrants and wants to deport. Joining us now to discuss the continued controversy over immigrant detention in New Jersey is WMIC's MacC's MacCATS. So Matt, folks might remember that New Jersey Governor for Murphy signed a ban on immigration detention facilities less than three years ago in August of 2021. How is that law now being challenged? Yeah, so a private prison contractor, the GEO group, they own a jail facility. facility in Newark called Delaney Hall. And it's had different uses through the years, but it

held immigrants for some time until 2017. Now, Geo Group wants to reopen this facility and jail immigrants there, and they want a federal contract to do so worth about $100 million. And this contract is available because the Biden administration is actively looking for a detention site that's within 50 miles of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office in Newark. The problem is neither local governments nor private contractors are allowed to open immigrant jails in New Jersey, according to this 2021 law. So last week, GEO Group sued Governor Murphy and State Attorney General Matt Plotkin saying the 2021 law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Is this the first lawsuit like this since the ban went into effect? No, it's not. The private prison industry is powerful, well-heeled business, and this is what they do. And also the federal government has really come to rely on private prisons, specifically to hold immigrants. So last year, there was another legal challenge from another company, Core Civic. They run a jail that immigrants have long complained about. It's in a converted warehouse in Elizabeth, New Jersey. And the company, CoreCiv,

because it was prohibited from renewing its contract to keep holding immigrants there under this 2021 law. A federal judge did actually side with Core Civic on that. They struck down part of the judge struck down part of the law, but the state is currently appealing that decision. There's been a flurry of briefs in that case in the last couple of weeks, and we should get a final decision on it soon. The Biden administration actually filed in court in support of Core Civic. So you have the Democratic Murphy administration in New Jersey facing off against the Democratic Biden administration over the most hot button of topics, immigration. Yeah. Bring us back. Remind us how this all began. Why did Governor Murphy ban ICE detention

in the state in the first place? Immigration, as you very well remember, Sean, it was the biggest issue for the left during the Trump administration. And we at the time had done a series of stories back then highlighting how the Trump administration deportation operation in our region relied on four facilities in New Jersey to hold immigrants. Three of those facilities were county jails run by local Democrats. So you had the situation where Democratic counties were making millions of dollars a year holding immigrants through lucrative contracts with ICE, and they were being held because Trump, a Republican, was so aggressively deporting immigrants.

immigration detention isn't for people who are held on crimes. It's a civic detention. Some of the people held just overstayed their visas. Some are asylum seekers who are held, you know, as soon as they land at the airport. Most already serve time for unrelated criminal offenses and then they're transferred to detention to await deportation. So at the time, during the Trump years, we told some pretty harrowing stories about the conditions inside these ICE detention facilities in the county jails in New Jersey, physical and sexual abuse, bugs in the food supply, lack of sanitary pads for women, extensive, extensive use of solitary confinement. And we documented how

immigrants were punished if they talked to us about these conditions. Eventually, activists won over enough state Democrats, including Governor Murphy, to get this law through to end ICE detention. They saw it as a way to achieve change locally while Trump was still in office and to really address the biggest issue of the time, immigration. So, Matt, in our last minute here, with all those counties out of the ICE detention center business, are private contractors the only option to house immigrants in the region? Yeah, I mean, and they are, and the implications are significant. I mean, you do have one other place, I should say, Orange County Jail in New York, that's a public jail.

They do hold immigrants right now. And then you have Elizabeth. And then there's nothing else. And if Trump is elected in November, you could certainly see a situation where ICE seeks to arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, but while you're putting them in deportation proceedings, where do you put them? And immigrant advocates who also, by the way, feel betrayed by Biden, who promised to end for-profit immigration attention, they want to make it harder for any president of any kind to lock up immigrants, at least in our region here. That's WNMIC's Matt

Katz. Matt, thank you so much. Thank you, Sean. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this afternoon.