New Jersey expands legal defense funding for immigrants facing deportation

Sherrill announces $12 million increase and new rapid-response initiative amid escalating immigration enforcement

In response to the Trump administration’s recent attacks on migrant communities, officials announced that the state will expand the funding and availability of legal services meant to help immigrants facing detention and deportation.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a first-term Democrat, said in a Thursday news release that New Jersey will devote another $12 million to the Detention Deportation Defense Initiative, which provides free legal representation to poor residents slated for removal.

The state will also create a Rapid Legal Response Initiative to fight expedited deportations that happen without due process, challenge other unlawful third-country deportations, and prevent transfers that push detainees far from their families and legal counsel, among other things.

“As the Trump administration makes it more difficult for members of our community to challenge detention and deportation, access to qualified legal representation has never been more important,” Sherrill said in a statement. “Here in New Jersey, we are helping ensure more New Jersey residents receive due process under the law and more New Jersey attorneys are mobilized to stand up for the fundamental human rights of detainees and their families.”

Immigration activists immediately applauded Sherrill’s announcement.

“Providing access to a lawyer is the best way to get people out of detention centers,” said Nedia Morsy, director of the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey. “This is one of the strongest investments a state can make to defend people’s rights under a fascist regime.”

In an Instagram post, advocacy group American Friends Service Committee called the funding increase a “significant victory for immigrants across New Jersey, and for everyone who believes in the right to due process.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey echoed this, noting that the new defense funding will bring the state’s total allocation to more than $20 million.

“Due process is a fundamental right and a core tenet of our democracy, but one that is routinely denied to people ensnared in the immigration system, especially under President Trump’s cruel mass detention and deportation agenda,” Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, said in a statement. “This is a culmination of the collective calls for action from so many across the state, and it will help countless people, including those detained at Delaney Hall, return to their families and communities.”

The announcement comes after days of violent protests outside Delaney Hall, a controversial immigrant detention center in Newark that has become the epicenter of the battle against Trump’s draconian immigration policies.

Demonstrations began shortly after about 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike on May 22 to protest what they have described as squalid living conditions inside the 1,000-bed facility.

Protesters clashed with federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security throughout Memorial Day weekend, prompting Sherrill to send in the New Jersey State Police to take over security operations and “lower the temperature.”

But the violence persisted, and the State Police used tear gas, mounted officers, and controversial crowd-control techniques to control the growing furor.

Sherrill has faced severe blowback for the State Police’s actions, which immigrant activists and civil rights advocates have said included the use of unnecessary force against overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators and the arrest of at least two credentialed photojournalists.