Dozens protest Orange County ICE jail contract in Goshen

Several dozen protesters gathered on the Goshen Green on Sunday, pressing Orange County to end its long-running contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and questioning why the county still houses ICE detainees at the jail in Goshen. The arrangement has brought the county nearly $134 per detainee per day, tying the issue to both public money and the county’s role in immigration enforcement.

Orange County first announced the deal on July 16, 2008, when then-County Executive Edward A. Diana and Sheriff Carl DuBois said the county had signed an agreement to house ICE detainees at the Orange County Correctional Facility. The jail sits within the sheriff’s office, and the county’s own footprint helps explain why the issue lands so close to home. Orange County spans 839 square miles and serves more than 379,000 residents.

On the green, handmade signs and banners called for ICE to leave the jail, while some demonstrators went further and demanded the agency be abolished. Speakers focused on the human cost of detention and the uncertainty families face when someone is taken into the jail system and then moved elsewhere without clear information.

Marie Martinez of Newburgh said detention harms both the person held and the relatives left trying to track them. She described the issue as trauma that can ripple through households for years, putting family separation at the center of the protest rather than treating the contract as a routine government agreement.

The demonstration also came against a backdrop of growing local resistance to expanded detention in the county. In February 2026, the Orange County Legislature’s Rules Committee unanimously opposed a proposed ICE detention center in Chester, signaling that county officials have not embraced broader federal detention plans even as the Goshen jail contract continues.

The ICE arrangement has also drawn legal scrutiny before. In 2023, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Bronx Defenders backed a federal lawsuit alleging retaliation and punitive discipline against detained immigrants at Orange County Jail after a February 2022 hunger strike and complaints about conditions.

For Orange County, the dispute now sits at the intersection of jail operations, county revenue, family separation and local power. The protest in Goshen showed the contract remains one of the county’s most visible and volatile political fault lines.