Democrat Sen. Andy Kim introduced legislation Thursday intended to stop the Trump administration from using taxpayer funds to detain immigrants in warehouses, hire more enforcement agents, and operate jails where migrants are held in inhumane conditions.
The bills come as federal Department of Homeland Security officials have been quietly carrying out a $45 billion expansion of detention facilities nationally, including one planned for Roxbury.
Kim told the New Jersey Monitor that his bills are meant to stop an “out-of-control DHS” that steamrolls communities without permission or accountability.
“ICE doesn’t care about what the local community thinks. They don’t care about what Congress thinks. They feel like they are completely in their right to just do whatever they want, because this Trump administration has given them that kind of green light,” Kim said.
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Kim cited deepening distress among Americans about the Trump administration’s hard-line tactics, which have included violent clashes, masked agents, and arrests at sensitive places including schools and courthouses.
That souring public sentiment has cemented Senate Democrats’ resolve to block further funding to the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to new restrictions on immigration enforcement, Kim added. The department’s funding expired last week, and lawmakers remain in a standoff on an appropriations bill.
“I’m not going to fund ICE one dollar more. That’s why we are in these deadlock negotiations about this DHS shutdown — because the American people don’t stand for this level of lawlessness,” Kim said.
The bills Kim introduced would:
- Bar the Department of Homeland Security from buying or using warehouses for immigrant detention with money from the massive budget reconciliation bill President Donald Trump signed last July. Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, is a bill co-sponsor. “I have walked through one of these warehouses and seen firsthand how these facilities are no place for human beings,” Booker said in a statement.
- Prohibit the department from hiring or recruiting more immigration agents using funds from the budget bill.
- Require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention Oversight to audit new and existing ICE jails, prohibit new admissions until deficiencies are fixed, and require ICE to report audit findings and facility fixes to Congress.
Homeland Security spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats have had trouble gaining ground on any issue with Republicans in control of Congress and the White House. But Kim said Republican senators have told him they share his concerns about Homeland Security officials opening migrant jails in warehouses in their states. The department plans to convert 23 warehouses into migrant jails that would hold almost 100,000 detainees combined, the Washington Post reported in December.
“They don’t want them there, and so I’m trying to build this bipartisan coalition of senators to say, look, this isn’t about partisanship. This is about our own communities, and how you cannot impose this upon our constituents,” Kim said.
Elected officials in Roxbury, who are all Republicans, vented their frustration last week that the federal government left them out of the loop when it bought a warehouse there to process detained migrants and ignored their objections that a federal detention facility would cost the Morris County township millions in lost property taxes and overwhelm utilities, public safety personnel, and other infrastructure.
Kim visited Roxbury to see the warehouse on Route 46 and was struck by its proximity to residential neighborhoods, with people’s houses within clear view. The feds paid about $130 million for the warehouse — a steep price tag that doesn’t including whatever the agency will spend to convert it into a detention center, Kim added.
“It’s larger than eight football fields, and it will be turned into this industrial-size detention facility of human misery,” he said.
New Jersey already has two migrant jails, including Delaney Hall in Newark and the Elizabeth Detention Center. Kim has visited both to provide oversight, called for the closure of all private detention facilities, and joined a letter New Jersey’s congressional Democrats sent to Trump last month opposing the use of warehouses for immigrant detention.
He said he also remains concerned about the Trump administration’s silence on its plan to detain immigrants at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County.
“Again, the local community is furious about this, and the local community is getting zero outreach about this,” Kim said.
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