6 events in Passaic County with a date

NJ has long history of immigration enforcement

Federal authorities focus on ports, warehouses

By: David M. Zimmer
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... On a gray morning in February 2025, unmarked SUVs rolled up to a customs-bonded warehouse in North Bergen.
..... Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection walked through metal detectors and past rows of pallets stacked high with imported goods. Within hours, 16 people working inside had been detained on immigration charges.
..... An ICE release said the operation began as a routine worksite compliance inspection but quickly led agents to individuals whop could not demonstrate lawful status. The agency described the action as a coordinated effort to enforce both employment and customs laws at a federally regulated facility.
..... A few months later, in July 2025, federal agents conducted a similar inspection at Alba Wines and Spirits warehousing and Distribution in Edison.
..... ICE officials said in anther press release that more than 100 people were encountered during the visit. Twenty were identified as being in the United States without authorization, and five had final removal orders from immigration judges. The inspections were issued under federal customs authority because the warehouse was on land designated for cargo bonded to international trade, a detail that officials said allowed agents to enter without a traditional warrant.
..... Both operations underscored a simple reality: For many workers in New Jersey, the U.S. Immigration system goes beyond border control and government offices. Federal authority to enforce immigration law inside the U.S. is more than a century old. In the aftermath of World War I, the Department of Justice carried out what became known as the Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920.
..... U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Paler authorized coordinated actions across dozens of cities, including Newark and Jersey City, to arrest and deport non-citizens suspected of radical political beliefs, during an anti-communist ere known as the Red Scare. Thousands of people were detained and hundreds were deported.
..... For much of the 20th century, immigration enforcement inside the U.S. was episodic and often driven by politics. But by the early 1980s, the debate shifted from political loyalty to economics.

Economics behind 1980s immigration enforcement

..... The country was emerging form a deep recession. Unemployment topped 10% in 1982, and lawmakers from industries states argued that unauthorized immigration was depressing wages and taking jobs form American workers. Labor unions pushed for penalties on employers who hired undocumented labor. Business groups warned that punishing employers would disrupt agriculture, manufacturing and service industries that relied heavily on immigrant workers.
..... The question before Congress was no longer simply who crossed the border; it was about who signed the person's paychecks. that debate produced the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA. The law, for the first time, made it illegal for employers to knowingly hire unauthorized workers and required businesses nationwide to verify the legal status of new hires with form I-9. Before URCA, employers were not legally responsible if they hired unauthorized workers. Enforcement focused on border crossings and deportations.
..... To track how IRCA was being implemented, Congress required period reports on employer sanctions. The General accounting Office, a congressional watchdog now called the Government Accountability Office, published a review in 1987 noting that the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS - the agency that precoded ICE - had mailed guidance to millions of employers, set up compliance teams and begun inspecting workplaces for I-9 compliance. A follow-up GAO report in 1888 from that the INS had identified hundreds of violations and was expanding its presence in urban and industrial areas, through it also warned of limitations in tracking and enforcing compliance.
..... That was the beginning of what enforcement analysis sometimes call the "paperwork raid" era. Audits of hiring recored and verification forms replaced dramatic arrests at border crossings. Federal agents showed up at factories and warehouses not to chase people through the streets but to demand to see what was in the filing cabinets.

Immigration enforcement after 9/11

..... After the 9/11 attacks, congress reorganized federal immigration enforcement under the Homeland Security Act of 2002, creating the Department of Homeland Security and, within it, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
..... ICE combined the enforcement functions of the old INS with investigative functions from the U.S. Customs Service. The agency's dual missions - enforcing immigration law and ensuring customs compliance - would define how operations like the 2025 North Bergen and Edison inspections were carried out. interior enforcement continued to expand in scope and method in the 2000s.
..... One of the most significant workplace enforcement actions nationally occurred on May 12, 2008, when ICE and partner agencies raided the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. In what was then the largest workplace enforcement operation in U.S. history, ICE said it detained 389 workers suspected of immigration violations. Many were later charged with criminal offenses, including aggravated identity theft and misuse of Social Security numbers, reflecting a shift toward criminal immigration prosecution.
..... The raid became a benchmark for later interior enforcement strategies and illustrated how a worksite inspection could become a mass enforcement action with far-reaching consequences.

Focus on NJ ports, warehouses, manufacturing

..... New Jersey's potion on the front lines of immigration enforcement is shaped by its economy and its immigrate population. Its ports, warehouses and manufacturing hubs make it a natural focus for federal authorities checking for unauthorized employment.
..... In December 2018, ICE announced a five-day statewide operation in New Jersey that resulted in 105 arrests of foreign nationals, most of whom led criminal convictions or pending charges and several of who were subject to Interpol warrants, an ICE press release said. that action, carried out across 16 counties, reflected a post 9/11 enforcement strategy that emphasized arrests of people with criminal histories or outstanding immigration violations.
..... That sort of targeted action has, for years, been rejected by many state residents and representatives. in the mid-2010s New Jersey officials issued directives limiting local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, reflecting both politician and legal resistance to some ICE actions.
..... Federal operations responded with creative use of statutory authority, such as leveraging customs inspections to enter bonded warehouses where local police cooperation would otherwise be limited. there was also the time they create a fake "pay-to-stay" college.

New Jersey's fake college was undercover sting

..... In 2016,Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE, announced the culmination of an undercover operation in New Jersey involving a factious institution called the University of Northern New Jersey.
..... The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey said federal agents cerated the fake school as part of a long-term investigation into brokers who allegedly were arranging student visas for foreign nationals with no intention of attending classes. More than 20 individuals were charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, and federal authorities said more than 1,000 foreign nationals were identified as having corralled in the sham university.
..... The shift form border checkpoints to employer compliance audits, large-scale workplace operations and coordinated stings has led to even more push-back. At the community level, tensions have surfaced in Roxbury, where residents have protested against ICE agents at a local warehouse facility, the same location where an agent reportedly shot out the tires of a vehicle during the arrest of a Honduran national.
..... At the state level, Governor Mikie Sherrill on February 11 [2026] signed Executive Order Number 12, prohibiting federal agents from using state property as staging areas or making arrests in nonpublic areas of state property without a judicial warrant. The state also launched a new ICE Incident Portal for residents to upload video footage of federal interactions.
..... "In the state of New Jersey, we are going to fight to protect everyone's rights," Sherrill said during the announcement.

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