Introduction
New Jersey has long been a refuge for immigrants seeking opportunity in the United States. Behind only California, New Jersey has the largest share of foreign-born residents: 23.2% of the population. This demographic, along with immigrant communities across the country, are now under threat because of Trump’s crackdown on immigration; increased ICE raids and national limits on immigration protections have led many families to be afraid to leave their homes. In lieu of this widespread fear, the New Jersey Immigration Trust Act offers protections for immigrants seeking support from state and local agencies.
What does the Act do?
First and foremost, the Immigrant Trust Act opens accessibility to public services for immigrants, regardless of their immigration status. It also proposes new data privacy protections, limiting the amount of information that can be collected on those who do seek support. This, in turn, ensures that when interacting with state and local governments, the collection of personal information regarding immigration status is limited. Subsequently, local resources will be “used to support local priorities rather than fund federal immigration enforcement,” as stated by aclu-nj.org. Overall, these protections ensure that immigrants—regardless of their legal status—are not afraid to access critical public services such as emergency healthcare, shelters, and education, as well as report crimes such as domestic violence or wage theft to local law enforcement.
Why is it important?
As the president’s hunt for undocumented individuals persists, immigrants both legal and illegal are under more perilous conditions. Upon multiple instances, U.S. citizens have been detained or deported with little to no due process, including the cases of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, Jensy Machado, and various occurrences in which children were deported with their mothers. Driven by the act itself, “immigration detainer requests do not require a warrant or any established standard of proof, such as reasonable suspicion or probable cause”; in this way, continued assistance to federal immigration enforcement has the danger of leading to more instances like the ones mentioned above. Addressing these concerns, the Immigrant Trust Act limits the reach of federal immigration enforcement, barring local law enforcement from providing assistance or resources to these initiatives unless compelled to by law. Undocumented immigrants, due to their status, are often deterred from seeking public services — “be it registering for healthcare, reporting wage theft, or contacting law enforcement” (aclu-nj.org). As a result of seeking these fundamental forms of support, individuals may face interrogation or detention at any time because of inquiries regarding their status throughout the process. In an effort to avoid sudden deportation, the Immigrant Trust Act prohibits collection of personal information unless necessary. “Government entities and healthcare facilities may collect information relating to a person’s immigration status, citizenship status, place of birth, social security number, and individual taxpayer identification number only when this information is strictly necessary to assess eligibility or to administer the requested public services, benefits, or programs that the agency, division, or facility is charged with “administering,” as stated in the third section of the Act. Moreover, in cases where information is collected, that data is protected by preventing it from being disclosed or kept as a governmental record.
What’s the difference between the ITA and the Directive?
If the Immigrant Trust Act’s policies sound familiar to you, that’s because they aren’t new to Jersey. In fact, the Immigrant Trust Act is effectively the same immigration policy in the Immigrant Trust Directive written into legislation. The Directive was put into place by former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, and has guided the state’s approach to immigration enforcement for the past few years. However, the protections outlined in the Directive are not permanent—they can be repealed by the current state administration at any time. What the Immigrant Trust Act will do is permanently codify these protections into New Jersey law, ensuring that regardless of who is in the governor’s office in Trenton, immigration protections remain firmly in place. This has therefore become a major issue in the current New Jersey governor’s race, with the majority of Democratic candidates running in support of the Immigrant Trust Act, and the Republicans promising to repeal the Directive as soon as they enter office.
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