Immigrant organizations will hold a vigil today across from the soon-to-be closed Varick Street Detention Center in Manhattan, to demand that immigration authorities use electronic anklets on the detainees, rather than transfer them to other centers. The imminent closing of the Varick Street Detention Facility was announced in January, and the transfer of at least 230 of its approximately 300 detainees to the prison in Kearny, Hudson County, New Jersey, began last week. The latter correction facility has a contract with the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a cost of $111 per prisoner per day.

Brian Hale, a spokesman for ICE, said that the Department hopes to complete the transfer of most of the detainees to other facilities by the target date, which is tomorrow, Friday.

A source at the Hudson County prison, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assured us that prisoners with serious medical conditions had not been accepted. Calls to that institution were not returned.

"The solution is not transferring them, but giving them the alternative of letting them out of jail wearing an electronic anklet," said Juan Carlos Ruiz, director of the organization Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. "It's much cheaper, because the anklet costs ICE only about $14 per person, compared with the more than $100 they have to pay the prison."

Amy Gottlieb, director of the Newark chapter of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), said that each case should be treated individually.

"If a person needs medical care, the best thing would be if that person were not locked up; these are civil detentions, they're not serving criminal sentences. The detention system ought to be reformed," she said.

Gottlieb indicated that she worries that "not all of the Varick Street detainees will be taken to New Jersey, and so their families and they themselves will be placed at a disadvantage by isolating them from their communities and their legal recourses." In past cases, New York immigration detainees have been transferred to centers as far away as Louisiana.

For years, one of the widespread complaints by detainees in immigration detention centers has been the precarious provision of medical services. Moisés Mory, who was detained in 2004 and let out with an electronic anklet at the beginning of last year, after having been held in several immigration prisons around the country, said, "The medical attention is lacking, and dental services don't even exist."

The Manhattan detention center, located at the intersection of Varick and Houston Streets, will be maintained as a place to hold immigration detainees temporarily while they await transfer to other facilities.

Today, at a press conference in front of the Varick Street detention center, members organizations announce a national campaign, "Dignity, Not Detention: Preserving Human Rights and Restoring Justice," to do away with detentions.