9/6/2025 – Just Talk (Bill Martin)
What does Broome County spend to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? It’s hard to know, for the figures of the number of daily ICE detainees in the County jail and their food, housing, medical care, and transport costs remain hidden, largely folded into the total number of persons caged on Federal–and not county–charges.
It’s a longstanding practice: since at least 2002 when a contract was signed with the U.S. Marshalls service, Broome County has held Federal detainees. The number used to be 20 or so persons a day. Since Trump took office and the County Sheriff signed an additional cooperative contract with ICE, the number of Federal detainees has ballooned to now 60 or more a day. On some days busloaeds of persons are brought into the jail by ICE in shackles, required ever more food, medical and correctional staff overtime, laundy, etc.
It’s a wonderful deal for Federal agencies like ICE: Federal reimbursements are only $110/day per person, less half the cost the County government pays. The average daily cost of incarcerating someone in the jail in 2024 was $278 (Broome Jail budget of $33 million divided by avearge daily population of 395). The average daily number of persons caged in the first seven months of 2025 rose to 405, lowering the daily cost to $230–still more than double the Federal payment.
Do the math and Broome County is gifting the Federal government over $1 million so far this year.
Perhaps it is time for county legislators to stop voting as they have for years on the food, housing and other jail contracts that hide these subsidies—and cancel the contract with the U.S. Marshalls service has turned the County jail into a detention center for ICE and other Federal agencies.
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