Assemblyman Ravi Bhalla is sponsoring legislation to counteract a federal immigration push in New Jersey, including a bill to ban U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from becoming New Jersey government employees, teachers or local officials.
Bhalla (D-Hudson) is a former mayor of Hoboken, the mile-square Hudson River city where federal enforcement operations on Feb. 1 prompted about 200 residents to pack a community meeting to learn their rights.
Bhalla compared the national round-ups under President Donald Trump to the broad detainments of Black people prior to the civil rights movement. Trump’s intentions are evident, he said, in his administration’s plans to build holding facilities in Roxbury in New Jersey, and elsewhere in the country.
“You’re seeing another iteration of that in this current moment where the federal government is trying to engage in mass incarceration of immigrant communities through the creation of these detention centers,” Bhalla told NJ Spotlight News. His proposed legislation, he said, “will strengthen New Jersey’s protections against ICE.”
Gov. Mikie Sherrill last week signed two executive orders designed to limit immigration enforcement. New Jersey is a sanctuary state that forbids law enforcement from cooperating with agents who lack judicial warrants for residents who lack documentation.
Bhalla’s first bill would ban ICE employees from many public-facing careers in New Jersey.
“If you decide to sign up to be an employee of this rogue enforcement agency that’s violating the constitutional rights of everyday New Jerseyans and everyday Americans, then you are simply not welcome to be in close proximity to vulnerable communities and people in New Jersey,” Bhalla said.
Another bill would impose a 50% tax on what he called “private detention profiteers” operating in New Jersey under government contract. That revenue would support an immigrant protection fund.
The last bill would protect crime scenes from intervention by agents working for ICE. Bhalla says the bill is in response to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, where local police were denied access to the crime scene and critical evidence.
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