By Philip Sean Curran
FREEHOLD – Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said last week that he is pursuing “legal remedies” in response to state Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal blocking his office from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Grewal, appearing in Newark, said Sept. 27 that he had issued a directive to all law enforcement agencies in the state preventing them from entering into 287(g) agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Such agreements, created by Congress in 1996, allow ICE to work with state and local law enforcement agencies, where “designated officers” can “perform limited immigration law enforcement functions,” according to the ICE web site. Officers are required to get training and “function under the supervision of ICE officers.”
In Monmouth, that arrangement had been in place for a decade at the county jail, where inmates are checked and, if found to be undocumented, ICE is contacted.
“The highly successful program is of great value to maintaining safety in our communities,” Golden said in a Sept. 27 statement reacting to Grewal’s announcement. “Law enforcement throughout Monmouth County never wants to be faced with a situation where a dangerous, undocumented immigrant is released from jail and poses a threat to a community.”
Something like that happened nearly a year ago with a case involving a nearby New Jersey county. In November 2018, an undocumented immigrant who had been released from the Middlesex County jail earlier that year was arrested in Missouri on triple murder charges. A detainer, or request that ICE had placed on him, was not honored by the jail.
But Grewal said last week that such cooperation arrangements, like the one Monmouth had in place, undermine “public safety by blurring that bright, clear line that we drew in this state between our law enforcement officers and ICE, a line that is critical to effective policing in the state.” He said his office has encouraged state residents to “feel comfortable reporting crimes to law enforcement,” regardless of their immigration status.
Earlier this year, Golden extended the 287(g) agreement with ICE. But as the state’s top law enforcement official, Grewal had issued an “immigrant trust directive” in November 2018, limiting cooperation between all law enforcement agencies and ICE. As part of that directive, those agencies needed Grewal’s approval before entering into 287(g) agreements. Monmouth renewed its agreement, however, before the directive took effect.
The Monmouth and Cape May sheriff’s offices were the only law enforcement agencies in the state that had those agreements in place, Grewal said. In July, his office contacted both demanding to know their justification for having them.
“Over the past several months, we’ve tried to learn why these two agencies feel so strongly about continuing their arrangements with ICE,” Grewal said. “And it’s become clear to me that their justifications simply don’t hold up. I’ve concluded that these agreements undermine public trust without enhancing public safety and that any of their purported benefits are already achieved through our immigrant trust directive.”
The timing of Grewal’s announcement came the same week ICE announced it had arrested 54 “criminal aliens” from 12 countries as part of a statewide sweep targeting those who had been released by local law enforcement instead of being handed over to ICE. The federal agency noted that it was still looking for three other men, including one who had been arrested in Vineland on child rape charges and let go from the Cumberland County jail despite a detainer being placed on him.
In his statement, Golden referenced those 54 arrests. He said “this sanctuary directive” by Grewal “will make our communities less safe, since it places people in those communities at risk for increased violence.”
“These are challenging times for law enforcement, as we do not recall a directive that has ever been issued to ignore the laws of this country or state,” he said. “As a result, we shall continue to pursue legal remedies to this directive, which deprives Monmouth County of the ability to identify individuals who have committed crimes and are here illegally.”
In a statement provided Sept. 30, acting ICE director Matthew T. Albence said, “It is past time to put aside all the political rhetoric and listen to the facts – and the fact is, people are being hurt and victimized every day because of jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with ICE.”
During fiscal year 2019, ICE said it had issued more than 160,000 detainers nationwide.
“Uncooperative jurisdictions should be on notice that as long as criminal offenders are being released, they should get used to seeing a lot more ICE at-large enforcement activity in their communities,” Albence said.
The dispute pits Golden, also the Monmouth County Republican chairman, against Grewal, a leading figure in the administration of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. Murphy has said he favors making New Jersey a sanctuary state for undocumented immigrants, while Grewal has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over its immigration and other policy decisions. Some state lawmakers from Monmouth last week weighed in on the controversy.
“I completely agree with my sheriff,” said state Sen. Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr. (R- 13). “It doesn’t matter how one feels about immigration policy, we all should agree that our law enforcement personnel should be empowered (to) apprehend, detain and hold accountable those that break our laws and pose us harm.”
State Assemblywoman Joann Downey (D-11) said, “We really need a national solution and sound immigration plan, not conflicting state-by-state laws and regulations.”
The original directive that Grewal issued allowed law enforcement authorities to alert ICE if someone in their custody was convicted or charged with serious crimes, like murder or rape. As part of his revised directive, he expanded the offense list to include weapons and domestic violence offenses. In the case out of Middlesex, the illegal immigrant who was released originally had been locked up on domestic violence offenses.
“These revisions reflect the ongoing conversations between the Department of Law and Public Safety and law enforcement agencies – who all share a commitment to protecting the public from the most dangerous of fenders,” Grewal wrote in a message to law enforcement agencies around the state.
“While I applaud the Attorney General’s adding additional offenses to the list of those reportable to ICE under the Immigrant Trust (directive),” O’Scanlon said, “I’m still siding with my sheriff.”
