Article - NJ SPOTLIGHT
IMMIGRATION ACTIVISTS URGE NJ COUNTIES NOT TO COOPERATE WITH FEDS
They fear greater push to find and deport undocumented immigrants when Trump becomes president
- Edison Hernandez, an undocumented immigrant, says he's preparing for tougher immigration enforcement by 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.
A Concerned Citizen:
"My comment - During the Obama administration’s tenure, over 300 cities have provided safe haven for illegal immigrants, and at least 170,000 convicted criminal illegal immigrants who have been ordered to be deported remain at-large. Sanctuary cities are dangerous to both law enforcement efforts and reducing illegal immigration.
Ending these policies does not require new laws on the books - enforce our current laws and ensure local law enforcement jurisdictions work collaboratively with federal immigration authorities regarding criminal illegal immigrants.
One of the arguments to sanctuary cities is the possible division of families. After the tragic murder of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco in April 2015 her family will never be able to get back together - whereas the illegal immigrants family members are still are alive. She is far from being the only victim of a crime committed by a criminal illegal immigrant.
Three people were killed and dozens of others were injured when Denis Yasmir Amaya Rodriguez, an illegal immigrant, crashed a bus full of volunteers on their way to assist folks impacted by a flooding event in New Orleans . And this accident could have absolutely been prevented and now their families will have a permanent separation.
Anecdotal info is one thing but from the GAO comes the following : ..." illegals and non-citizens make up 3% and 8% of the population, respectively, but commit at least 22% to 37% of the murders. Illegals likely commit murder at about 10 times the rate of all U.S. inhabitants. he Government Accountability Office has data that show otherwise. Here is the leading sentence from a 2011 GAO report (GAO-11-187, Criminal Alien Statistics, March 2011).
“The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000, and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails was about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009 (the most recent data available), and the majority were from Mexico.”;
(SCAAP is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and in this context means “illegal aliens” – a GAO term meaning “Noncitizens whom ICE verified were [or whom states and local jurisdictions believe to be] illegally in the United States at the time of incarceration”.)
As for those federal prisoners, the GAO states, “In fiscal year 2005, the criminal alien population in federal prisons was around 27 percent of the total inmate population, and from fiscal years 2006 through 2010 remained consistently around 25 percent.”;
Guess who is paying for their residence in prisons. Might be cheaper to send them home - even if their own country won't take them back.
Per the GAO, “as of fiscal 2009, the total alien – non-U.S.-citizen – population was about 25.3 million, including about 10.8 million aliens without lawful immigration status.”;
Since the population of the U.S. was about 306.8 million in 2009, non-citizens comprised 8.25% of the population and illegal aliens about 3.52%. (Recall that they represented 25% of the federal prison population then, and almost 39% in 2013.)
How many crimes did they commit? Almost three million."
Sanctuary cities - counties, states and now colleges - are in direct conflict with federal law. Worse still, these cities are actively releasing criminal illegal immigrants back into our communities instead of working with federal officials to deport them or lock them up.
I didn't know we had a choice to decide what laws are to be followed.
Cut federal funding when there is clear violation of the law and making our communities more dangerous rather than safer. Falling short of enforcing our laws designed to protect innocent American civilian lives is an absolute nonstarter.
Gloucester County officials need to ensure that these illegal policies are stopped and needs to ensure our safety for every American - it has to be their absolute top priority otherwise vote them out of office - because they are acting criminally."
jscheidell@comcast.net
No one wants advice -- only corroboration."
-- John Steinbeck,
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jscheidell@comcast.net
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