Dear Editors:
It has been just a year since Governor Murphy signed a law to that New Jersey no longer hold detainees, ensuring that our state no longer imprison or profit from unjustly jailed.
asylum seekers (although the notoriously horrific Elizabeth Detention Center will operate until next year). But our work is not done. Now we must urge our representatives to sponsor and support the Values Act ( S512/A1986) so that immigrants need not live in a state of continual terror of ICE, the national deportation machine.
New Jersey’s immigrants continue to fear that each time they go to Motor Vehicles, or report a crime committed against them, or send their children to school or to a library or hospital that ICE officers lie in wait to hunt them down and destroy their lives.The Values Act makes clear that it is not the job of local or state law officers to cooperate with ICE and enforce immigration law, nor should local resources intended for the community continue to be used against our neighbors, our friends, or co-workers, our families. It prohibits our local and state officers from acting as the agents and handmaidens of ICE as they detain, deport and rip apart families.
Call, email, or write to your state representatives and let them know that we don’t want New Jersey to be complicit in the dehumanizing, cruel and senseless actions of the federal ICE system. Tell them that we need them to vote yes to the Values Act to make New Jersey a place where immigrant communities can feel safe and welcome.
Sincerely
Laura Morowitz
Verona, New Jersey
