Immigrants and their advocates fought to force New Jersey officials to stop holding people in deportation proceedings in county jails for years. But as local jails started announcing they would stop detaining immigrants for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency started sending detained immigrants to far flung parts of the U.S., away from their families and lawyers.

ICE has been telling various lawyers representing immigrants who were detained in New Jersey that it cannot release their clients due them being a public safety threat, despite some immigrants being jailed on unresolved charges for nonviolent crimes, like Anthony. The situation underscores the power ICE has over where and how detained immigrants are held, unlike in the criminal court system where advocates have sometimes led a successful push to reduce pretrial detention.

"We all hoped that ICE would use its discretion to release," said Ellen Pachnanda, the attorney-in-charge of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project at the Brooklyn Defender Services. But now, one thing is now clear for advocates, Pachnanda said: "As long as ICE retains this discretion to transfer, they will transfer."

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