New bill would bar public funding for ICE detention centers in NJ
Measure would block state and local tax dollars from supporting detention sites
A new bill introduced in March would bar officials from spending state or local tax dollars to build, run, or subsidize immigrant detention centers. The bill is part of a broader push to rein in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the state.
The measure, S-3864, would effectively prohibit towns, counties, or the state from using public money to fund the controversial facilities, while still allowing spending on health and safety services for detainees.
It would also ban local governments from selling, leasing, or donating any publicly owned property for use as a detention camp, and stop the state from renovating public properties for that purpose.
Immigration advocates said the bill, which currently sits in the state Senate’s Law and Public Safety Committee, is a move in the right direction, but still doesn’t go far enough.
“It’s a good step forward; it shows the state is being progressive,” said Sally Pillay, director of the Mami Chelo Foundation, a New York City nonprofit that gives legal support and financial help to immigrants facing deportation. “It’s a real structural victory.”
“But I think most of us in the activist network probably feel it’s not transformative enough,” she said. “The facilities still operate, right? They’re federally funded, people are still being detained, people are still being deported.”
The bill, sponsored in the state Senate by Passaic County Democrat Benjie Wimberly, is one of a litany of measures proposed by state lawmakers in recent months that’s meant to throw a wrench in ICE’s gears.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a first-term Democrat, has already signed some of the bills into law, including a ban on ICE agents wearing masks and a measure that limits local and state police cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“In the past two months, we’ve watched poorly trained, masked ICE agents put communities across the country in danger,” Sherrill said at a March bill-signing ceremony. “In this state, we have drawn a line, no, not here.”
ICE, which has conducted sweeping immigration raids nationwide at the behest of the Trump administration, currently uses two sites in New Jersey as detention camps: the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall in Newark and the 300-bed Elizabeth Contract Detention Facility in Elizabeth.
Private prison operator GEO Group runs Delaney Hall, and its competitor CoreCivic runs the Elizabeth facility.
In February, ICE also spent $130 million on a 470,000-square-foot warehouse in Roxbury that it plans to convert into a holding facility for as many as 1,500 detainees, despite fierce local and state opposition.
It’s not clear if Wimberly’s bill, which has an identical companion bill moving through the General Assembly, would have affected that purchase.
But it would, in the future, ban paying, reimbursing, subsidizing, or otherwise defraying the costs of buying, building, developing, or managing any such facility that’s owned or run by private operators like GEO Group.
Lawmakers have sent the Assembly version, A-4167, to the chamber’s State and Local Government Committee.
Not everyone is convinced of the bill’s merits, however.
Kathy O’Leary of Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, said it’s yet another piece of legislation that may look better on paper than it is in practice.
“There seems to be an effort for everybody to look like they’re doing something,” said O’Leary, who frequently visits Delaney Hall to help families visiting their loved ones.
“Some of the bills do a little. But what we need most is money for legal assistance,” she said. “It’s bankrupting these families. They need money for a lawyer; they need real pro bono legal services. They need help from the government.”
Neither Wimberly nor any of the Assembly sponsors responded to a request for comment. Representatives for GEO Group and CoreCivic also did not respond.
In a Monday email, an unnamed spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it “should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”
Lauren Bis, the department’s acting assistant secretary for public affairs, also pilloried the measures Sherrill has already signed and said ICE agents would ignore New Jersey’s “irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous” mask ban.
In the email to The Jersey Vindicator, Bis claimed agents have faced increased pushback, including a 1,300% rise in assaults; a 3,300% jump in vehicular attacks; and an 8,000% increase in death threats.
“ICE officers wear face coverings for one reason: to protect themselves and their families from real-world threats,” she wrote. “The danger is not hypothetical.”
“Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from wearing masks is despicable and a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers,” Bis continued. “To be crystal clear: we will not abide by this unconstitutional ban … New Jersey’s sanctuary politicians do not control federal law enforcement.”
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Steve Janoski is a multi-award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, The Bergen Record and the Asbury Park Press. His reporting has exposed corruption, government malfeasance and police misconduct