PATERSON Immigrant detainees will no longer be held at the Passaic County Jail, the focus of complaints alleging ill treatment of people facing deportation. Sheriff Jerry Speziale ended the multimillion-dollar contract with the federal government because the detainees required so much attention, spokesman Bill Maer said Wednesday. The jail, which was paid to hold an average of 200 detainees, now has 110, of which 10 to 20 are leaving each week, Maer said. The departing detainees, most of whom face no criminal charges, go to other sites in New Jersey, as well as New York or Pennsylvania, said Michael Gilhooley, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the detainees. The Passaic County Jail became one of the nation’s largest immigrant detention centers after the Sept. 11 attacks, eventually holding nearly 500 detainees, said Ron Fava, sheriff at the time. That surge was followed by hunger strikes and other protests charging mistreatment and crowding. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is to release a report in February on conditions for detainees. An Amnesty International report in March 2002 said detainees were abused in the Passaic County Jail. U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine, now the governor-elect, toured the jail that month and later said that prolonged imprisonment of detainees violated the right of due process. Homeland Security in December 2004 banned the use of dogs to control detainees after National Public Radio reported about a dog attack at the Passaic County Jail. On Dec. 13, immigrant advocates charged that guards beat an Egyptian detainee, which was denied by the sheriff’s department. The government paid the Passaic Sheriff’s Department about $12 million in 2003, and an expected $6.9 million this year, to house the detainees. The jail will now take more federal and state prisoners to offset the loss, Maer said.