AREA— Union County’s decision to auction off its underutilized jail complex has met with opposition from local leaders who say that allowing the property to be sold for use as either a privatized prison or immigration detention center could lead to unwanted complications for the surrounding community.

“We should be building futures, not selling incarceration. New Jersey must stand against profit-driven detention and with the people who make our communities strong,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said via social media last month, shortly before the Board of County Commissioners cast its split vote to solicit proposals for the property.

The Union County jail, a 10-story, 1,000-bed facility, has largely served as a processing center since prisoners were transferred to the Essex County Correctional Facility as part of a five-year, shared-services agreement in 2021.

County officials, who said during the board’s March 27 meeting that the facility “is no longer of public use,” now plan to subdivide a piece of county-owned property that houses both the jail and the Union County Administration Building in order to facilitate the sale.According to a resolution passed during the board’s meeting last month (the full text of which was not included in the public agenda packet), the county plans to set its starting bid threshold at $120 million.

The plan has drawn criticism from activist groups across the state who say that the sale will open up the door for unwanted partnerships with private prison companies and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) officials amid continuing federal policy shifts.

Last week, the members of the Elizabeth City Council joined the fray with a resolution that asks the Commissioner Board to reconsider its decision and to draw up a new, clearly worded resolution to guarantee that the property will not be used for these purposes.

“The presence of detention centers in local communities has been shown to have a range of negative impacts, including the separation of families, the heightened fear of apprehension and arrest among the immigrant community,” the council said via its resolution, which also encourages the city’s planning board to amend its Master Plan to “explicitly prohibit the construction, expansion or operation of detention centers, jails or prisons” within the boundaries of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is already home to one ICE detention center. That facility, located on Evans Street, has recently come under fire for fostering an unsanitary, overcrowded and inhumane living situation for those housed within its walls.

County Manager Edward Oatman said last month that the public bidding process “will include clear limitations on how the property can be used,” and promised that any future detention centers that may hope to operate out of the property would be restricted to housing “only those involved in the criminal justice system.”

Elizabeth City officials, however, say the commissioner board needs to be much more specific.

“The City Council of the City of Elizabeth finds these statements vague and insufficient to safeguard the local community in light of [ICE’s] authority to detain undocumented persons who have been arrested but not yet convicted of any crime,” the Elizabeth resolution states. “The additional presence of a detention center or prison in the City of Elizabeth is not only detrimental to the community, but also wholly unnecessary.”

Requests for additional comment by Union County were not returned at the time of publication.