Edison
Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant, says he's preparing for tougher
immigration enforcement by the Trump administration.
Advocates
for immigrants’ rights are urging New Jersey towns and counties to
resist pressure to cooperate with federal enforcement efforts that are
expected to increase under the Trump administration.
Supporters of
about two dozen groups belonging to the New Jersey Alliance for
Immigrant Justice gathered at the College of New Jersey in Ewing on
Saturday for a day-long summit to discuss ways of responding to the
threat of more detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants
when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
They
called on counties to reject any more requests by Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deputize local authorities in detaining
undocumented immigrants under Section 287g of the Immigration and
Nationality Act which allows the federal government to enter into such
agreements with state and local law-enforcement agencies.
Such agreements already exist in Hudson and Monmouth Counties, while one is being considered in Salem County, activists said.
Although
it’s unclear whether Trump will follow through on campaign promises to
deport all of the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented
immigrants living in the U.S., deport only those with criminal records,
or build a wall along the US-Mexican border, advocates such as the
American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the American Friends
Service Committee urged supporters to prepare for a more aggressive
federal policy on immigration enforcement.
Although recent reports
have suggested that Trump has softened an earlier pledge to eject all
undocumented immigrants, activists still fear more deportations than
under President Obama, whose administration deported some 2.5 million
undocumented immigrants between 2009 and 2014, according to the
Department of Homeland Security.
The detention or deportation of
millions more immigrants would be beyond the current capacity of the
federal immigration authorities unless they enlist the support of local
law enforcement, said Ari Rosmarin, Public Policy Director of the ACLU
of New Jersey.
“The Trump administration is going to need a lot of boots on the ground to do its dirty work,” he told the conference.
It’s
possible that the new administration will begin deporting undocumented
immigrants if they are arrested on suspicion of a crime, rather than
waiting for a conviction, and may press for longer prison terms for
convicted criminals who are also found guilty of immigration violations,
he said.
The new administration may also step up its efforts to
identify undocumented immigrants by using E-Verify, a government-run,
internet-based system that allows employers to check whether a job
applicant is eligible to work in the United States, Rosmarin said.
He
argued that advocates for New Jersey’s estimated 450,000 undocumented
immigrants should assume that Trump’s campaign pledges to crack down on
illegal immigration will become policy. “We should not take them for
anything but what they are saying,” he said.
Undocumented
immigrants who would be vulnerable to any new crackdown include
Esperanza Del Barrera, 58, a native of Peru, who has over-stayed the
visa on which she came to the United States four years ago.
Del
Barrera, who lives in Newark and works as a babysitter, said she came to
the U.S. to be with her two daughters, who also overstayed their visas
and remain undocumented.
She said on the sidelines of the
conference that she has become more worried about the threat of
deportation since the election of Donald Trump but has faith that she
and her daughters will be able to stay in the United States. She chose
to attend the conference and speak to a reporter because, like many
other undocumented immigrants, she wants to argue for the right to
remain in the country.
“For me particularly, since I’m fighting
this fight, I am not afraid,” Del Barrera said, through a translator.
“But I’m afraid for my daughters’ lives because they live in the
shadows.” She declined to be photographed.
Activists are also
concerned about the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA), an Obama administration initiative that allows about 750,000
“dreamers” --young undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United
States as children -- to defer deportation for a renewable period of two
years, during which they can continue to live and work legally in the
United States. ;
US Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) told the
conference that if Trump acts on a campaign promise to end DACA, it
would subject the young people to the threat of deportation and cause
billions of dollars in economic damage to the U.S. companies that employ
them.
“By dismantling the program, the president-elect would
strip these young people of their jobs, their education, their
communities, their future, and their faith and trust in the government
of the land they have come to know and love,” Menendez, the son of Cuban
immigrants, said. “They are Americans in every way except for a piece
of paper.” ;
In a possible reprieve for DACA, it would be
protected by the Bridge Act, bipartisan legislation introduced on Friday
in the U.S. Senate. The bill, cosponsored by Republican Sen. Lindsey
Graham and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, would allow young immigrants who
have qualified for DACA to stay in the United States for three years if
the program is canceled. ;
The Trump transition team did not
respond to questions on whether the new administration will increase use
of the 287g rule to enlist state and local agencies to work with ICE or
end DACA.
Any decision to scrap the DACA program could have dire
consequences for Edison Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant from
Uruguay, whose 16-year-old daughter qualifies for the program.
Hernandez,
51, who lives in Elizabeth, said his daughter was born in Uruguay two
years before he and his wife moved to the United States. They also have a
12-year-old son who was born in the United States and so is a U.S.
citizen.
Hernandez, a construction worker who supports the
immigrants’ rights nonprofit Make the Road New Jersey, said he is
bracing for more deportations under the new administration.
“As an
organization, we are preparing for the worst,” he said, through a
translator. “If there are deportations, we are preparing to defend
ourselves.”;
Hernandez said he would like to become a U.S. citizen
but does not know how he could do so. “There would have to be an
immigration reform legislation passed to allow me to adjust my status
and eventually become a citizen,” he said.
Meanwhile, Menendez is
urging Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, to end the 287g
rule before the end of the current administration.
While Johnson
did not give a commitment on that request, Menendez said he will
continue to press to end the program because of concern that it could be
used by the Trump administration to crack down on illegal immigration.
“How
that might be used by the next administration is really consequential,”
he said, to applause from the approximately 140 conference attendees.
Advocates urged the public to call on county authorities to end their cooperation with ICE or not to begin it.
“The
biggest pressure has to be at the freeholder level,” said Johanna
Calle, program coordinator for the alliance. “If you are a resident of
Hudson County, Monmouth County, Salem County, and this is something that
concerns you, call your freeholders, call your county executives, let
them know that this is not something that you want your money going
into.”;
She said the 287g program uses county staff and other
resources, paid for by local tax dollars, to do the work that would
normally be done by federal immigration officers.
Counties that
have agreed to work with ICE are not compensated by the federal
government but may be reluctant to cut those ties if they also rent
space in county jails to house immigrant detainees -- a service for
which some get paid millions of dollars by ICE, Calle said.
The
possibility of losing federal revenue also applies to “sanctuary cities”
such as Newark and Princeton which have said that they will not
cooperate with federal policy that aims to detain or deport undocumented
immigrants, she said.
“A lot of cities and counties, with the
threat of the federal government defunding their agencies because they
do sanctuary-city policies -- they are going to have to decide whether
they can find other ways to get paid if they no longer participate in
these programs,” she said.
