NJ's current immigration situation discussed by advocates
By: Ricardo Kaulessar
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... "As we took the elevator up, immigration [Agents] entered the elevator and took him. And we have not been able to locate him."
.....
That was how Media Morsy, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, described witnessing firsthand the trump administration;s crackdown on immigrants.
.....She told her story on a panel about immigration before an audience at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center on April16, [2025] part of an event called "Doubling Down on democracy: conversations about the Way Forward."
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Morsey was recalling a recent incident involving a 19-year-old brain-damaged member of her organization. The teen went to the federal courthouse in Newark for a final hearing on his eligibility for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, an immigration classification for permanent residence for children subject to abuse, neglect or abandonment by their parents or legal guardians.
..... But on his way to the hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers took him away.
..... Morsey's recollection elicited audible groans from some attendees. She then said he was kept at the Elizabeth Detention center in Elizabeth before being transported to Louisiana, but she is still trying to find out exactly where he is detained.
..... Morsy continued. "The fascism isn't fare away. It is not in the abstract,. It is here. It is in our backyard."
..... Morsy was joined by fellow immigration advocates Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrate Justice; amber Reed, co-executive director of AAPI New Jersey; and Ami Khachalia, campaign strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, who moderated the panel on the immigration polices of the Trump presidency, the impact on New Jersey;s immigrant population and what state officials can do to protect the state's immigrant population.
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New Jersey is home to an estimated 475,000 undocumented immigrants, the Pew Research Center says, and overall, 2.3 million immigrants, nearly a quarter of the state's population, government data shows.
..... the panelists addressed New Jersey;s elected leaders' responses to actions against migrants during the current trump administration compared with the first one. Torres said she was not seeing enough push-back from the governor, state legislators and even local officials. She pointed to the failure to pass the Immigrant trust Act after it was introduced in the Legislature in September, [2024] saying it would protect the state's immigrants.
..... The Immigrant Trust Act would limit New Jersey state and local agencies from sharing personal information with ICE or assisting federal officers in the field when they are enforcing civil warrants, typically issued for low-level offenses like failing to appear in court or staying in the country after a visa expires. It was a topic of discussion at a forum for candidates running for governor, also held at NJPAC, on Wednesday [04/16/2025] night.
..... "We're not seeing any courage in leadership to let folks know that there's someone who has their back - even if the federal government is against you, not all government is against you," Torres said. "I don;t think we're hear that message coming out of Trenton. I don't think we hear it come out of every city in New Jersey I think that leads us into complying in advance."
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They then took on concerns about the challenges that immigrants face in dealing with the government's repressive actions against them.
..... Reed said her concern is the federal government being weaponized to go after immigrants, such as those in the Asian community in New Jersey, in the service of a "white supremacist agenda."
..... When you see Asian immigrants subject to these deportations to jungles in Costa Rica, and you see Bhutanese American refugees who have been here for years and years, being deported back to the country they fled from in violation of every established international humanitarian principle, you know that the fear that it instills is exactly the point of this," Reed said.
..... She was referring to a group of about 200 migrants, mostly Asian, who were deported from the United States to Costa Rica in February. [2025] Some natives of the small South Asian nation of Bhutan, who came to the U.S. as refugees from ethnic persecution, have been deported back since January [2025] to their home country, only to be forced out after a short stay.
..... When it comes to the priorities of immigrant advocacy groups and their members in supporting immigrate communities in the state, Morsys aid, they need to build a progressive infrastructure to rally these communities against right-wing forces on such matters as the registration of immigrants who recently became U.S. citizens.
..... "Where there is a voter registration gap the ultra-right has ocme in to fill it, and they can do that because htey ahve the infrastructure to do so. they have community groups they have Knights of Columbus; the have veterans; clubs. They have spaces," Morsy said. "All of that stuff, when people feel like they are in a community, that's how you build trust, and that is how you grow. And that is the same thing, we need to do in the state."