Atlanta Mayor orders city to end relationship with ICE and remove ALL detainees from city jail
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered city to stop holding ICE detainees
She signed an executive order on Thursday and removed most detainees
As of Thursday evening just five detainees remained in the city jail, a major drop from 205 detainees counted in June
She said: ‘We will no longer be complicit with a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population’
In June the Democratic Mayor also signed a separate executive order that blocked the jail from taking in any new ICE detainees
MARLENE LENTHANG
DAILYMAIL.COM
7 September 2018
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has ordered the city to stop holding US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in prison.
The executive order signed Thursday cut city ties with ICE, declaring Atlanta will no longer hold anyone for the federal agency and transferred most remaining detainees out of prisons where they were being held.
‘We will no longer be complicit with a policy that intentionally inflicts misery on a vulnerable population without giving any thought to the fallout,’ Lance Bottoms said.
‘As the birthplace of the civil rights movement, we are called to be better than this,’ she added.
As of Thursday evening several ICE detainees had been removed and five people remained in Atlanta City Detention Center, a major drop from 205 held there in June, according to 11Alive.
Over the summer the number of detainees has dropped as ICE has released several of them, deported others, or transported migrants to other detention centers.
The decision to cut ties with ICE was recommended by a task force that reviewed the city’s immigration policies following Trump’s zero-tolerance- policy that detained and divided hundreds of immigrant families entering via the Mexican border.
In June the Democratic Mayor also signed a separate executive order that blocked the jail from taking in any new ICE detainees, according to MyAJC.
Lance Bottoms has condemned the separation of immigrant families, resulting in her refusal to accept detainees into city jails.
However holding ICE detainee’s has been profitable for the city as Atlanta has been paid $78 a day for each detainee held in the jail through a contract with the US Marshals service. The city raked in $7.5million through the deal for this fiscal year as of June – more than a fifth of the jail’s annual $33milllion budget.
The Rest…HERE
