Slimy lunch meat, moldy showers, strip searches. Feds find horrid conditions at N.J. ICE facility.

“Overall, our inspections of the four detention facilities revealed violations of ICE’s detention standards and raised concerns about the environment in which detainees are held,” the report said.

Under U.S. law, detainees facing immigration charges are held under civil, not criminal, law and they usually have not been charged with crimes. So, their detention is not supposed to be punitive, according to ICE rules.

Critics say there is little oversight of the ICE facilities and the detainees, who are often undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, are powerless to complain about treatment or conditions.

In addition to the Essex County Correctional Facility, inspectors made surprise visits in 2018 to: Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California; LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Louisiana; and Aurora ICE Processing Center in Colorado.

Conditions were so bad at the California and New Jersey facilities the inspector general issued individual reports about those two facilities earlier this year that lead to changes. Many of the conditions in the new report issued last week were previously detailed in a separate report about the Essex County Correctional Facility issued in February.

At the Essex County Correctional Facility, inspectors found open packages of raw chicken leaked blood all over the kitchen refrigeration units, moldy bread, slimy and foul-smelling lunch meat and other dangerous kitchen violations.

“At Essex, the food handling in general was so substandard that ICE and facility leadership had the kitchen manager replaced during our inspection,” the report said.

Inspectors also found detainees were being placed in segregation, away from other detainees, as punishment for breaking rules without proper hearings. The facility also violated ICE rules on when detainees can be placed in handcuffs or strip searched, the report said.

Some detainees were only given an hour a day outside their cell for showering, recreation time and phone time to speak to their attorneys, the report said. Inspectors said the Essex County facility had “mesh cages” inside glass enclosures inside housing areas to provide “outdoor” recreation for detainees.

Inspectors also included photos of moldy bathrooms and non-working toilets in detainee housing units.

ICE said several improvements have been made to the Essex County Correctional Facility, including replacing the food service manager, training the staff on food handling, documenting why detainees are strip searched and adding more recreation time for detainees. The facility was also cleaned and renovated to improve the housing units, the report said.

Essex County Correctional Facility Director Al Ortiz did not immediately respond to a request to comment about the latest report. In February, he said the facility had a proven safety record for its detainees and officers.

“We understand the issues raised in the Inspector General’s report and have taken steps to address and rectify the conditions. We are proud of our proactive approach to meet the needs of our detainees and the high standards of care that we have set for our facility,” Ortiz said.

The Essex County Correctional Facility also holds county jail prisoners, but they are held separately from the ICE detainees.

The inspector general inspected the facilities in 2018 based on complaints from detainees and immigrant rights groups, the report said.

ICE has contracts with facilities across the nation to hold detainees, which often include immigrants who may wait months for deportation hearings. In New Jersey, ICE has contracts with Essex, Hudson and Bergen counties to hold detainees in county jails for a daily fee of more than $100 per person. The agency also uses the Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility, which is run by CoreCivic, a private company that owns and operates prisons.

Some New Jersey immigration advocates have called for New Jersey counties to drop their contracts with ICE and stop holding detainees. But other advocates have said it is important to keep detention facilities in the state, so detainees are not sent out of state and can be held near their families and attorneys while awaiting hearings.

Last year, Human Rights First, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group that advocates for immigrants, toured several immigrant detention centers in New Jersey and found similar troubling conditions, including food with maggots, dirty drinking water and shoddy medical and mental health care.

“In New Jersey, ICE has essentially stopped granting parole to asylum seekers, with a few exceptions, leading to unnecessary, lengthy and prolonged detention,” Eleni Bakst, the lead researcher for Human Rights First’s report, said at the time. “This, coupled with inadequate and delayed medical and mental health care and often inhumane conditions, exacerbates the suffering of traumatized individuals, many of whom faced violence or persecution in their home countries.”