ICE in the crosshairs as NJ Democrats fight to win back control of Congress

New Jersey Democrats who have spent more than a year clashing with the Trump administration over the president’s mass deportation effort say winning the House in November could give them real power to probe what they call the administration’s immigration enforcement abuses.

They have protested outside Newark migrant jail Delaney Hall, fought the feds’ plan to build a detention center in Morris County, and held a shadow hearing to reveal what they say is the human cost of immigration enforcement and detention.

“Part of the reason you do those is to clearly demonstrate what you would do if you had the gavels and what type of hearings you would have,” said Rep. Rob Menendez (D-08), who is running for his third term in November with no Republican opponent.

The Nov. 3 midterm elections will decide whether Republicans retain control of Congress or whether President Donald Trump’s plunging approval ratings will allow Democrats to flip the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, or both. Here in New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker (D) is on the ballot, as are all 12 House seats.

A Democratic victory could force more Trump administration officials to testify in front of Congress at hearings controlled by Democrats, and it could give the party a stronger hand in deciding how much money U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement receives in the future.

New Jersey has made national news for being on the front lines of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, with Delaney Hall becoming a flashpoint in the debate earlier this year when protests erupted outside the facility. Morris County residents, too, saw themselves at the center of the debate when the administration said it would open an immigrant processing center in Roxbury, a plan that quickly became the target of a lawsuit by the Sherrill administration and Roxbury’s GOP leadership. And Rep. LaMonica McIver (D) is set to stand trial on federal assault charges related to one of her oversight visits to Delaney Hall last year, a trial she said is part of the president’s crusade against his administration’s critics.

New Jersey Democrats have touted the work they’ve already done as the party in the minority, including regular oversight visits to Delaney and Elizabeth Detention Center. Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-11) said she found a constituent in detention during one of those visits, a Morristown small business owner with a work permit who paid taxes and who had been detained and “given a quarter of her diabetes medication.” Mejia won a special election in April to represent the 11th District in the House and is running next month to remain in the seat for the 120th Congress, which begins its term in January.

“As we prepare for the 120th, we need to ensure that we’re creating a roadmap, a pathway to citizenship, to as many law-abiding people that actually build and support our economy, our nation, our democracy,” she said.

Her Republican opponent, Joe Hathaway, said he worries a Democratic majority would lead to a rise in power for the party’s left-leaning faction. Hathaway, a councilman in Randolph, said those Democrats want “no jails, no Supreme Court, no borders.”

“That group will have now an outsized influence when it comes to legislation,” he warned.

At a recent town hall in Bloomfield, Mejia told voters she does indeed believe the nation should have borders.

“It is important for us to realize, however, that our immigration system, one, it has evolved,” she said. “Part of the problem that we are seeing is that people stay in limbo for over a decade, even if you’re following the law. And so what I have advocated for is we should invest in a system — if you can fill out a credit card application and in 15 seconds you are determined credit-worthy, that means that it shouldn’t take a decade to investigate someone’s background to make sure we understand who they are and whether or not we want to absorb them, welcome them into the fabric of the United States.”

Much of the conversation about New Jersey’s role in the national debate on immigration has focused on Delaney Hall. But it has reverberated statewide, even down to the 2nd Congressional District.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew flipped that district to Democratic control in 2018 before he changed parties and became a Republican. Van Drew visited Delaney Hall back in June and said critics of conditions inside the jail are lying about what they’ve seen. Democrats “continue to choose the side of illegal immigrants over the American people,” he said during a congressional hearing in July.

This week, Van Drew said an alleged drunk driver who struck and seriously injured a Middle Township police officer on Friday has an active ICE detainer. He called the incident another in a line of “preventable tragedies.”

“Just weeks ago, a baby was killed in a New Jersey parking lot by an unlicensed driver who was in this country illegally. Then a six-year-old girl was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a man who should have been deported. Now we have a young South Jersey police officer fighting to recover from devastating injuries. When is enough enough?” Van Drew said in a statement.

Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock, the Democrat challenging Van Drew, in an interview blasted the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort and Van Drew’s support of expanded enforcement.

“He represents an area where we need immigrants. We need them in our restaurants. We need them on our farms. They are out there right now farming in South Jersey, and he would like you to ignore that,” he said.

Mullock said he supports a strong border but said he would return “decency and respect” to immigration enforcement efforts. He also would ban private prisons in New Jersey, expand transparency around immigrant detention, and work to expand pathways to citizenship.

“We should decide who and who isn’t invited into our country. There’s no doubt about that. Full stop. Period. Strong border. However, we were supposed to be going after the worst of the worst, and that is not what’s happening,” Mullock said. “People who are washing dishes or working on a home on my own street are being arrested by ICE with basically no criminal history. That is insane.”

Rachel Peace, a Democrat hoping to unseat Rep. Chris Smith, the Republican incumbent in the 4th District, said she’s heard from voters that immigrants need to come to the U.S. “the right way,” but she thinks that misunderstands American immigration rules, which have become overly complicated.

“It used to be very simple: You come to Ellis Island, you provide them with your name and information, and you’re allowed entry,” Peace said.

But people emigrating here now face varying caps on who can come from what countries and other restrictions where missteps can result in reentry bans or worse, she said.

“Instead of making it so hard for people to ‘do things the right way,’ can we not modernize our process?” Peace said.

Making immigrants gain citizenship “the right way” is a campaign talking point for Michael McGuire, a Republican hoping to unseat Rep. Herb Conaway (D) in the 3rd District. McGuire released a video this week calling for a strong border and a path to citizenship for “people who follow our laws.”

“This is about being smart and fair, securing our border while giving people who do it the right way a real chance to become citizens,” McGuire said in a statement.

Ryan Michael Kelly, an independent also running in the 3rd District, said this message means little “when the system itself is broken.”

“When Congress begins its new term in January, I want to see real immigration reform. That means fixing processing delays, improving legal pathways, protecting asylum seekers and families, and restoring strong civil rights oversight” at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Kelly said. “I also support abolishing ICE and replacing it with an accountable enforcement system that focuses on real public safety while respecting the Constitution.”

Hathaway has also called for immigration reform. He said he supports a path to green cards for long-term residents who contribute to the economy, raise their families here, and do not have a criminal background. People who commit crimes, he said, should be deported.

“People who are trying to achieve the American dream, they shouldn’t have to look over their shoulder all the time, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop,” he said. “I think we need to be creating a system that gives folks like that a real pathway toward recognition.

Adam Hamawy, the Democratic nominee in the 12th District, said he’s not confident that Republicans and Democrats could agree on meaningful immigration reform. The most immediate change if Democrats are in the majority would be increased oversight, he said.

“We need to have some subpoenas. We need to have some hearings,” he said. “We need to charge the criminals that are shooting our neighbors in the street and kidnapping them while they’re dropping their kids off to school.”

Hamawy said immigrants in his district, including naturalized citizens who now carry their passports with them, have been made to feel “second class,” whether they are here legally or not.

“If there’s a normal legal process, people will go through it,” Hamawy said. “We just are lacking that.”