Residents of New Jersey’s Roxbury Township weren’t able to convince Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to move forward with a planned immigrant detention facility in their town, but under a new proposal from local Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), they would at least get some compensation for it.
Kean introduced a bill today, the “Local Taxpayer Protection Act,” that would establish a Department of Homeland Security grant program for municipalities that are or will be home to immigrant detention or processing centers. The grants would reimburse towns for certain covered expenses “such as lost property tax revenue, increased demand on public utilities, and infrastructure upgrades needed to support expanded capacity loss of local property tax revenue.”
Two other New Jersey cities, Newark and Elizabeth, are already home to operational detention facilities and could stand to benefit from the bill as well. DHS also has plans to build yet another facility at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a major military installation in Burlington and Ocean Counties, though it’s not clear when operations there will begin.
“Federal agencies operate in all 50 states, and law enforcement agencies have a particularly important job, one that often demands a higher level of resources,” Kean said in a statement. “Local taxpayers cannot be expected to foot the bill for federal facilities, and towns like Roxbury should not have to absorb the costs.”
ICE’s plans for Roxbury have become a substantial political headache for Kean, who represents a district Democrats are eager to flip this November – and whose path to re-election depends on reliably Republican Roxbury and its surrounding Morris County towns.
After the Washington Post first reported in December that DHS was considering purchasing a warehouse in Roxbury for use as a detention facility, residents and local GOP officials quickly mobilized against the plan, saying neither the site nor the town could handle such a facility. ICE officially purchased the warehouse late last week; according to Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo and the all-Republican township council, local leaders were not consulted once before the deal was done, which they said was “inconceivable and frankly stunning.”
Potillo and the council also publicly criticized Kean, a member of their own party, who “did not engage to the level we had hoped to provide the advocacy our residents deserved,” they said in a joint statement. Democrats, both those running against Kean and those who represent nearby districts, pounced as well; Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) called Kean “a liar and a punk” on social media.
In the months since news of the proposal first broke, Kean has never come out in opposition to the facility itself, but he’s defended himself from accusations that he was not sufficiently engaged on Roxbury’s behalf.
“The residents of Roxbury can be assured that I will not stop fighting for a workable solution,” Kean said on Saturday. “The overwhelming majority of residents, along with the state and the country, support getting criminal illegal migrants off our streets and stopping the flow of Fentanyl. We need to, and will, keep a level head as we continue to work constructively to deliver results.”
