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Immigrant crackdown sows fear in NJ, US

Legal residents, workers among those targeted

By: Hannan Adely
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... As President Donald Trump ramps up deportations and restricts immigration, the impact is hitting New Jersey's large immigrate community, whose members have faced raids, arrests and deportations, including people with no criminal history and legal residents.
..... In Newark, [NJ] immigration agents detained undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens in a January 23 [2025] workplace raid as a seafood store, reportedly without arrest warrants. In Haddon Township, [NJ] a Turkish couple who own the popular Jersey Kebab restaurant were arrested February 25 [2025] despite having a pending green card application. In federal court in Newark, [NJ] Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil fights the Trump administration's attempt to deport him over pro-Palestinian speech.
..... Trump has also revoked legal protections from more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, giving them until April 24 [2025] to self-deport or potentially face arrests, sending shock-waves into New Jersey's ethnic communities.
..... The immigration crackdown, happening around the nation, comes at a fraught time in U.S. politics. Many Americans now support immigration curbs after seeing record numbers of migrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023 and bused across U.S. cities, straining government services. Deep anti-immigrant hate speech have also fueled tensions. On the campaign trail for the White House, trump condemned many immigrates as "dangerous criminals' who were "poisoning the blood of America.
..... While anti-immigration sentiment seems to be at a fever pitch, it is not a new phenomenon. Throughout U.S. history, movements to ban or deport immigrants have risen and fallen. Typically they are driven by beliefs that certain immigrants are less desirable, disloyal or dangerous, that they don't fit into American culture, or that they take away jobs. they've also been triggered by political , such as the Red Scare, when suspected communists and radicals were rounded up and deported.
"We're had periods of very big debates about how many immigrants should be allowed into the country and what types of immigrants benefit a country," said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. "I think we're in one of those big debate moments following a period of pretty high migration across the border. I suspect that as a country we will continue to cycle through moments of really emphasizing the benefits of immigration and moments of emphasizing the concerns."
..... The past may also provide signs for how the U.S. emerges from an era now seeing mass deportation of individuals in the country both illegally and legally, and the slashing of legal pathways to migrate to the U.S.
..... In its first decades, the United States had encouraged free and open mitigation to settle land, build the economy and boost the population. That changed in the late 1800s as immigration surged, said Kornel Chang, associated professor of history and American studies at Rutgers University in Newark. [NJ]
..... Politicians and activists condemned Irish Catholics as a threat to the nation, arguing they would subvert the values of Anglo-Protestant America. They blamed Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, and Koreans for economic distress. These groups were accused of stealing jobs, depressing wages and falling to assimilate into mainstream society, Chang explained. They were also blamed for spreading crime and disease.
..... In the late 1800s, the nation passed the first federal restrictions prohibiting certain groups of people from entering the country, including criminals, people with health problems and Chinese laborers. A 1903 law barred anarchists, epileptics and beggars.
..... The harshest restrictions were enshrined in the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed quotas that heavily favored people from northern and western Europe. It severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, including Jews and Italians and effectively barred immigration from Asia.
..... "Before those acts are passed, there is no such thing as an undocumented immigrant,," Chang said. "without restriction, you can't be undocumented."
..... A century later, rhetoric about immigrates diluting the social and cultural fabric of the country offers echoes of the past.
..... Trump has rallied support for his immigration crackdown by framing many immigrations as criminals and terrorists, as bringers of contagious disease and as "animals."
..... Right-wing leaders and activists have promoted the :great replacement theory,' the conspiracy theory that Western elites are deliberately brining in non-white immigrants to displace or diminish the power of whites and Christians. Claims of "white extinction" have inspired violent hate crimes, including mass shootings at a Buffalo supermarket and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

'Sense of disorder'

..... Other reasons exist today for the swell in support for stronger immigration curbs. There's a larger global rise in right wind populism that's intertwined with anti-immigant sentiment. There is also deep concern about illegal immigration and a perception of chaos at the border.
..... Concerns peaked in recent years as Americans saw dramatic images of caravans of asylum seekers arriving in groups of hundreds or thousands at the U.S. Mexico border. The United States struggled to handle the influx and huge backlogs accumulated in the court system.
..... "It seems like the sense of disorder in immigration really hurts public support for immigration, even sometimes legal immigration," Gelatt said. "In the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as now, we've seen really high numbers of people arriving at the border and lots of images of the sort of chaos that can hurt public sentiment.
..... President Joe Biden, through executive orders in his final years in office, took steps to restrict immigration that, coupled with stepped-up enforcement by Mexico, significantly reduced border crossings. But it was too late to shake the perception that the border was out of control.
..... The 1965 Immigration Act laid the foundation for the steep rise in illegal immigration. The measure got rid of the country quotas and created a new system that prioritized family reunification and skills. It also set an annual limit of 20,000 visas per country, without regard for its population or proximity to the United States. People form the Western Hemisphere, facing drastically reduced pathways to legal immigration, turned increasingly to illegal border crossings.

How does the tide turn?

..... The climate could become welcoming for immigrates again, but for now, immense challenges stand in the way, said experts.
..... "My own sense in looking at the past - it;s when there isn't a great deal of attention around immigration and borders, where I think that moment politicians and policymakers will see an opening where they might be able to come to some sort of deal," Chang said.
..... "As long as there is the attention and security and borders, I see any kind of reform effort is doomed."
..... Americans have always had a sense of caution toward immigration, especially during times of economic or cultural anxiety, Chang said. But there have been times of reform.
..... The 1965 law intended to undo discriminatory quotes, ahd popular support, with some 70% of Americans saying they favored the new law, according to the Pew Research Center. But there was also "almost no partisan differences on the issue" at the time, unlike the current extreme political polarization around immigration.
..... Until recently, many Republican leaders, with encouragement from the business community, supported increased legal immigrants. President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 - the last comprehensive immigration reform measure - which made any immigrate who entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty, while toughening border security and setting penalties for hiring undocumented workers.
..... In the past few decades, reform masquers has failed to advance in a highly polarized political climate.
..... "With President Trump's initial campaign and election in 2015 and 2016, we saw a real shift in the Republican Party to be very skeptical, even of legal immigration, even of high skilled immigration," Gelatt said. "We have a political party that is casting all immigration as something that's negative for the country rather than legal immigration begin good and illegal immigration being detrimental."
..... In the long run, demographics could be a factor that shifts the tide toward opening immigration pathways, said Gelatt.
..... "With the aging of the U.S. population and declining birth rates," she said, "We will depend on immigrates to continue the growth of our labor force and the growth of our economy. there are counties that have made different choices, and they have aged without a lot of immigration and there are a lot of negative economic and social impacts of that."
..... "If we see continued low arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, and we're back in a situation where most immigrates are coming legally to the United States, that can re-establish American trust in immigration and in our immigration system and hat could help to build back support," Gelatt added.
..... "But we're in a chicken-and-egg situation, where it's hard to reform our immigration laws because of how politicized immigration has been, but we really need to reform our immigration laws to facilitate people coming legally. It's a challenging path ahead to get to a better place."

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