6 events in Passaic County with a date

Trump is ready to target immigrants

How will these sanctuary cities reach to push?

By: Ricardo Kaulessar
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... In 2018, Hoboken [NJ] became a sanctuary city, "a fair and welcoming city," to protect undocumented immigrants.
..... Now, with Donald Trump returning to the White House, the North Jersey city could be in jeopardy due to Trump's promise of mass deportation and cutting federal funds to sanctuary cities across the country.
..... It is a concern for Hoboken [NJ] mayor Ravi Bhalla, the son of Indian immigrants, but one that he said will not deter him from serving all his constituents.
..... "First and foremost, I think it is important for the public to realize that this mayor in Hoboken, [NJ] and I'm sure that mayors across the state of New Jersey, are primarily concerned with local issues," Bhalla said in an interview whit NorthJersey.com . "Our municipal budget is often strained, and we work very hard to make sure our budget delivers important city resources to residents. And we don't want those resource those taxpayer dollars diverted toward doing work that the federal government thinks is a priority for itself."
..... Sanctuary cities, while not an official or legal designation for a municipality, refer to municipalities that limit, cooperation between local police and federal immigration enforcement offices. However, many do not officially use the term "sanctuary city" in passing resolutions to prohibit cooperation, instead opting for "fair and welcoming city" or just not using the term a tall.
..... However, the president-elect, who starts ins second term in office on Monday, [01/20/2025] has targeted these cities if they interfere with his mass deportation plans, which could deport as many as 11 million undocumented immigrants, including 470,000 who reside in New Jersey.
..... Tom Homan, Trump's pick for "border czar" the person who would be responsible for carrying out and overseeing the deportations, in an interview in November [2024] with Fox News' Mark Levin, threated that the returning Trump administration would use a "very, very powerful weapon that the Democrats when they're in power use against Republican administrations, state and local, all the time: federal funding," that echoes Trump's efforts to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities in his first administration.
..... Bhalla recently spoke to NorthJersey.com about city's plans to deal with Trump's targeting of undocumented people. NorthJersey.com also contacted by phone and email the mayors of other municipalities in North Jersey considered sanctuary cities, including East Orange, Maplewood, Newark, Prospect Park, Jersey City and Union City, several times.
..... According to the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D. C.-based anti-immigration think tank, there are approximately 170 sanctuary cities across the United States. Some of the major cites that are sanctuary cities include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.
..... the movement for sanctuary cites dates back to the 1980s when immigrants for El Salvador and Guatemala, which were experiencing wars and governmental instability, came to the United States to seek asylum. In 1985 San Francisco passed a "City of Refuge" resolution and ordinance that prohibited city funds and resources form being used for federal immigration enforcement. In the Garden State, municipalities that declared by resolution or executive order not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities began just after trump took office in his first term.
..... East Orange was the first to do so in December 2016, Maplewood followed in January 2017, Newark, jersey City, Prospect Park and Union city took similar actions in the same year. [2017] In January 2018, it was Hoboken;s turn with an executive order. That was in response to Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric during his 2016 campaign and his subsequent actions in office. In various speeches during his 2016 presidential run, he called for such measures as constructing a wall along the U.S. southern border, ending the Deferred Action for childhood Arrivals program that provides some legal protectionist for people who were brought illegally to the United States by their parents, and cutting funding to sanctuary cities that oppose his administration's deportation efforts.
..... Trump acted on his promise to cut funding to sanctuary cities but was stymied by legal action.
..... A few days after he took the oath of office in January 2017, he issued an executive order sanctioning sanctuary cities by making them ineligible "to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes." The order was challenged by various cities and counties, which resulted in a federal judge in California in November 2017 issuing a nationwide injunction against its implementation. When President Joe Biden came into office in January 2021, he rescinded the executive order. Trump could put the executive ore back on the table once back in office.

One city's plans

..... The Hudson County city of Hoboken [NJ] is home to 57,000 people, according to the U.S. census in 2023. The census shows that 15% of the city;s population is Hispanic or Latino residents of any race.
..... The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that 42% of New Jersey's undocumented residents hail form Mexico and Central America. Bhalla said he did not have the numbers for undocumented residents in Hoboken [NJ] and would never have such numbers. For him, they are all entitled to the same rights and protectionist as any other resident. "Our position is that anyone in the city of Hoboken, [NJ] whether they're are resident or coming here on a daily basis, as long as they are a law-abiding citizen, pay taxes, and contribute to the community, they have equal rights," Bhalla said. "They're no different from myself or anyone else. the Constitution of New Jersey and the Constitution of the United States provides equal protection under the law and we're going to enforce those protections.
..... The Hoboken [NJ] mayor said the city not only has a "fair and welcoming city" executive order as a guide to enforce protections, but also a directive set down by the Hoboken [NJ] Police Department in January 2018 where "no officer or employee of the Hoboken [NJ] Police Department shall expend any time, funds, or resort on facilitating the enforcement of immigration law, except where state and feudal law or regulation or directive or court order shall so require."
..... Bhalla said Hoboken [NJ] in his seven years as mayor has never received a request from federal authorities to cooperate on any law enforcement action regarding undocumented immigrants.
..... He also observed while there is a fear of retaliation by the Trump administration toward sanctuary cities, Bhalla is cautiously optimistic that the federal government will not go down that path again, citing how Hoboken [NJ] was able to receive federal funding in the first Trump term for the Rebuild by design project to make Hoboken [NJ] more resilient to flooding. "The approach we took was to proactively engage HUD [Housing and Urban Development] under the Trump administration. We brought the Region 2 EPA [environmental Protection Agency] director to Hoboken, [NJ] gave her a tour of what was in the pipeline and why this project was important," Bhalla said. "It was through personal interactions and through direct engagement that we were able to effectuate continued cooperation through the Trump administration."
..... Bhalla continued, "even if we might not agree with all the polices of the Trump administration, it's important for mayors, for governors to find common ground where we can find common ground."

Protecting the vulnerable

..... Prospect Park in Passaic County [NJ] is a town of 6,300 people. the U.S. census estimates over 50% of the population identified as Hispanic or Latino of any race. In 2017, Prospect Park [NJ] Mayor Mohamed Khairullah singed an executive order that made his hometown a sanctuary city without using "sanctuary city" terminology and instead upholding the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. constitution. Eight years later, Khairullah said Prospect Park [NJ] will continue to protect undocumented immigrants from any deportation efforts carried out by the Trump Administration.
..... "Obviously, our [political] system is based on cheeks and balances. No eon has an absolute power to do whatever they want," said Khairullah, who was born in Syria. "Whatever we can do to provide services and protect those who are vulnerable, we will do. We're not gong to be intimidated into not helping people who heed help. We will act based on our humanity." Khairullah said the threat of mass deportation by Trump to remove criminals "does not make a good argument against immigrants.: He also said that Trump will run into the same legal challenges that he face in his first term to trying to stop funding to punish sanctuary cites as well as trying to carry deportation on a large scale.
..... "He's going to hurt the economy with his actions. so, I think he is going to face resistance on many fronts, more than he expects," Khairullah said

Return to policy

..... Ramapo College professor Mihaela Serban said she would not be surprised to see Trump again implement his executive order targeting sanctuary cities.
..... Seban, who is a Professor of Law and Society at the college, said in an intervene that while Trump's 2017 executive order was struck down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that same year, three years later the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruler that the U.S. Department of Justice could impose conditions on states and municipalities receiving federal funds if they failed to cooperate with law enforcement.
..... "That's why I suspect because there hasn't been a unanimous take on this across the country ... the executive order will come back in some form or another," Serban said. "But them of course, what we will see after that is more litigation," Serban also sees that the trump administration will tighten the language of the execute order so that it only covers Department of Justice grants. She predicts that the fight over the reimplementation of the executive order could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
..... However, Serban noted it will be more challenging in the present time for those who push back on Trump's attempt to punish sanctuary cities.
..... "The political landscape is deferent. The anti-immigraiton rhetoric has resonated more this time around," Seban said. "I think cites will be cautious in terms of how they proceed, not whether they proceed.

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