Immigration Weekly Round-Up: NJ State Assembly Votes to Ban ICE Detention; Immigration Benefits No Longer Denied for Minor Application Errors; Children Face Harsh Conditions in Immigration Detention
Friday, June 25, 2021
Banning New Prison Contracts with ICE
After being stalled for months, a bill that prohibits entering new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts at private detention centers or renewing existing ICE prison contracts is now advancing through the New Jersey State Legislature. On Monday, the bill passed the Assembly by a margin of 46 to 24. It has now also been passed by the New Jersey State Senate Budget Committee and will be heading to the Senate for a full vote. Democrats and immigration advocates widely support the bill, and with a Democratic majority of 25 to 15 in the State Senate, the bill is likely to pass.
A primary sponsor of the bill, Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen County), said that “county jails and other entities should be used to house people accused of real crimes, not to hold undocumented immigrants, and thereby needlessly separating them from their families.” Amy Torres, Executive Director for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, issued a statement that “the committee vote sends a clear message: whether at the local level or in the halls of Trenton, the state’s doors are closing to ICE.” And Banan Abdelrahman of the American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program emphasized the human toll of continued detention, noting that “people detained inside currently call me regularly in fear that they’ll never see their loved ones and wonder why they have to face this ‘just because we were born in the wrong country.’”
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/immigration-weekly-round-nj-state-assembly-votes-to-ban-ice-detention-immigration
