Mazin Sidahmed reports in DocumnetedNY that the sheriff's of Albany and Rensselaer counties are treating immigrant detainees in very different ways. Sheriff Craig Apple of Albany County is making every effort to grant immigration lawyers access to the detainees. Sheriff Patrick Russo, in Rensselaer County, does not believe that arranging lawyers to help immigrants is his job. “They’re treated like any other inmate,” Russo said. The Rensselaer County sheriff has entered into an 287g agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that deputizes his staff to enforce immigration law. Apple in Albany County took immigrant detainees into his jail in part, he says, to get them better treatment. “You see some of these horrifying photos of tent cities,” Apple said. “People with mylar blankets and penned in cages.” The immigrants cast into the two facilities ten miles apart are subject to the luck of the draw. “It’s very unequal,” said Vanessa H. Merton, director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at Pace Law School. “Depending on where [ICE] put you there’s a broad variation in access to representation and to other tools as well,” she added. Russo's operation is not very clear. “We have zero transparency about what’s going on inside [of Rensselaer],” said Sarah Rogerson the director of the Albany Law School's Immigration Law Clinic. “We have no idea if people are being transferred there, what they’re doing with them or whether or not they have access to counsel. That has been a persistent problem.” Read the full story in DocumnetedNY.