Graphic by Edward Andilema / SOC Images.
A woman holding a torch on an island tells its own migrant tale, one that serves as a beacon of light for over 12 million immigrants who set their gaze on the cascading promises of freedom, inspiration and a new hope here in Hudson County.
What would Hudson County be without the story of an immigrant?
Slice of Culture reached out to 12 cities in Hudson County, asking how U.S. President Donald Trump administration’s recent immigration-related orders would translate into the everyday lives of immigrants at the local and municipal level moving forward.
On day one of his administration, he signed off on dozens of executive orders, eight being immigration-related orders out of 37 executive orders. The orders signed off by the president emboldened the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to arrest individuals who do not carry legal status here in the U.S. and follow through on his professed campaign of “mass deportations.”
Slice of Culture previously reported on the arrest of three undocumented workers by ICE agents two weeks ago at a seafood depot in Newark–one of them being a Puerto Rican U.S. military veteran. The visit from ICE came without a warrant, violating a constitutional right–to not have “unreasonable searches and seizures,” without an issued warrant.
“One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned,” read a statement by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, related to the arrests made without the issuing of a warrant.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there are approximately 170 sanctuary cities nationwide. The term generally refers to states, counties or cities that impose restrictions on their level of cooperation with federal agencies in deporting undocumented immigrants. Back in 2019, Governor Phil Murphy declared the State of New Jersey would fall under the lens of a sanctuary state.
Hudson County Tells Its Own Immigrant Story
“We are a nation of immigrants and diversity is one of the strengths of this country,” said Jerome Choice, a long-time Jersey City resident and local historian serving as a board member at the Museum of Jersey City on 298 Academy Street at The Apple Tree House.
Choice walked Slice of Culture through the museum as he pointed to the historical landmarks of the early sites of the Lafayette district. He grew up surrounded by Polish and Hispanic communities, in a city teeming with what Choice described as a “mosaic of immigrants that make up Hudson County and throughout the country.”
The beginnings of Hudson County can be traced back to its roots where the inhabitants of the Lenni Lenape, a Native-American group of the Algonquian tribe were living before Dutch settlers arrived. The Netherlands began arriving in 1609 when Henry Hudson, a Dutch explorer, set sites in Communipaw, which is now Liberty State Park, formerly a Lenape encampment site. A link to information about the historical exhibition can be found here.
Data from 2019 showed that approximately 75,000 undocumented immigrants made up the population of Hudson County, with residents originating from: India (11 percent), Mexico (11 percent), Guatemala (10 percent), El Salvador (10 percent), and Ecuador (8 percent), according to figures by Migration Policy Institute, a think tank based in D.C.
One Immigrant Story, A Success Journey
“You are not even supposed to be studying in this country.”
Those were words a worker at the International Student Center at Bergen Community College told Sergio Ruiz, thinking he had been an international student in the U.S. for nearly a decade.
“That’s when I realized not everything is as easy as I thought,” Ruiz said, who immigrated with his family from Lima, Peru in 2001. He and his family left amidst civil unrest and made their way to West New York.
Ruiz told Slice of Culture that one of his earliest memories of moving to the U.S. was feeling the basement floor of his parent’s house shake as the Twin Towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Following the collapse, there was heightened scrutiny of Muslims, Arabs and South Asian populations with the crackdown of immigrants; approximately 2.3 million deportations took place in a decade, according to the American Immigration Council.
He said one of the lasting motivations for moving to the U.S. was his father’s interest in watching the U.S. World Cup.
On June 15, 2012, then-President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a gateway to worker authorization in the U.S. to more than 530,000 active recipients. He applied for DACA in 2013 and within two months received his Social Security and worker’s permit.
“Things started to move quickly,” he said, as he took his first job working overnight shifts at Walmart.
He worked two other jobs, all while juggling being a full-time student at Bergen Community College, where he received his associate’s degree in accounting and then his bachelor’s at Montclair State University.
Now after all this time, Ruiz finds himself in his new job working as a senior internal auditor at JPMorgan Chase, he told Slice of Culture, his family is incredibly proud of him.
“There are so many stories out there, moving to New Jersey, we realized we weren’t the only immigrants going through the same process…I would tell those in my similar process to keep going.”
What Do Undocumented Immigrants Contribute In Hudson County?
Migrants pumped nearly $1.3 billion worth of state and local taxes, according to a 2022 study that looked into the tax income contributed by around 428,000 undocumented immigrants in the State of New Jersey.
A public data set that tracks county-by-county the tax rate contributed by undocumented immigrants in New Jersey found that when it comes to the tax revenue of the state, approximately $80 million in Hudson County comes from an immigrant without legal status, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based institute.
If granted legal status, which would allow access to a work permit and a pathway to citizenship, they would add to nearly $90 million in taxes paid out by an immigrant.
“People are usually surprised to see that immigrants who are undocumented, pay any taxes at all,” said David Kallick, the director of the Immigration Research Initiative, adding that undocumented immigrants would not qualify for social security, medicare and unemployment benefits.
Kallick said the removal of immigrants would generate a significant tax revenue loss of nearly $130 million in New Jersey, leading to what he described to Slice of Culture as a “financial loss” and a “shrinkage in our economy.”
On the other side of the Hudson River, New York City has a current tax rate of 10.6 percent, but in the case of an undocumented worker giving the right to work, they would contribute 12.3 percent. Additionally, if an undocumented resident in New Jersey were granted work authorization, they could contribute an extra $332 million each year, according to the study.
“The term ‘undocumented immigrant’ can go into so many different avenues in the law,” said Cheryl Lin, who is the managing attorney at Cheryl Lin Law firm based in Jersey City and has been practicing for nearly 15 years. She added that now she prepares her clients with “Know Your Rights” workshops, amidst the crackdown of undocumented immigrants.
She told Slice of Culture in a recent interview she’s received calls from worried families in fear of being in the next round-up of ICE deportations.
“You may not necessarily be able to avoid ICE coming in and detaining you [undocumented immigrant], but what you can do is at least be prepared and have a plan in place.”
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Deportations Aren’t New, But Here’s What Is
The deportation of migrants picks on a repeated thread in U.S. history, going back to the 1930s, with the mass deportation of over 2 million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans (born in the U.S.) sending them back to Mexico.
Slice of Culture reached out to the mayor’s office for the following cities: Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, Union City, North Bergen, West New York, Kearny, Secaucus, Harrison, Guttenberg and East Newark.
As a collective response, city officials said they acknowledged ICE agents in neighborhoods reported to have ICE sightings such as West New York and Union City.
“They do not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution. They do not have the power to unilaterally disregard our laws. That’s true for Donald Trump. That’s true for every president that came before him and every president who will come after him,” said Matt Plankin, the New Jersey Attorney General in a press conference in Newark amidst the crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
But the term mass deportations from the federal government seems to be far from the reality of what local and state law enforcement agencies in New Jersey have declared under the previous Trump administration.
The Immigrant Trust Directive signed into state legislature back in 2018, aimed at strengthening trust between law enforcement officials and immigrant communities who may be hiding in the shadows from ICE.
“It basically creates a firewall between local law enforcement and federal ICE enforcement,” said Amol Sinha, head of ACLU-NJ, referring to the Immigrant Trust Directive.
“President Trump does not get to decide who gets to be an American, he can not with a stroke of a pen rewrite the constitution,” adding that the 14th amendment grants citizenship “to all people born or naturalized in the United States.”
A lawsuit was filed by the ACLU last year to ICE requesting records related to the potential expansion of a detention facility in Newark.
Hudson County Officials Want To Protect Its Undocumented
In the FOIA, the considered detention centers mentioned in the lawsuit include the Elizabeth Detention Center, which is owned by CoreCivic, a publicly listed company handling private prisons and detention centers along with Robinson Center in Trenton, owned by the GEO group both.
The protections granted in churches and schools in New Jersey lean on a bill passed by the state legislature which “prohibited state and local entities and private detention facilities from entering, renewing or expanding.”
Within the month, in Jersey City, a resolution was introduced and passed, referred to as the “Golden Door of America,” requiring the city to promote resources available to residents and pushing forward the NJ Immigrant Trust Act at the NJ State Legislature.
The Immigration Trust Act would establish state legal protections for “immigrants interacting with government agencies,” on a state level and would bring it on over to the municipalities. The act is sponsored by Senator Gordon Johnson of District 37 (Bergen County) and Senator Brian Stack of District 33 (Hudson County).
Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh, who led this resolution in tandem with the JC Immigrant Affairs Committee, is the son of Palestinian immigrants who came to the U.S. to pursue like many immigrants, a better way of life. “There is a fallacy that immigrants create crime or don’t pay taxes when the opposite is true.”
He told Slice of Culture, that this bill would preserve immigrant rights to use healthcare services “without fear of their information being used for nefarious purposes.”
Many immigrants who spoke to Slice of Culture and did not want to be on the record for this article, claimed they were concerned about being deported having brought their families here, decades ago.
Other members who work at school facilities also did not want to go on record due to the current political climate brought forth by the Trump administration, and said they were concerned that “having to prepare our members for an ICE raid is surreal and sickening.”
Educators, like healthcare workers, are sharing tips on TikTok for interacting with federal agents. Immigrant coalitions and parents are leading “Know Your Rights” trainings in schools.
Some schools are increasing mental health offerings as widespread fear and anxiety increase along with anti-immigrant hate, as was expressed to Slice of Culture.
In a previous interview with Slice of Culture, Norma Fernandez, the current Superintendent of Jersey City Public Schools, added that “precautionary measures” would be set in place in the scenario that ICE agents were to walk on site.
On the NJ Department of Education Site, resources available for school-related and federal requirements for immigrant studies and families can be found on their site. In addition, “Know Your Rights” indicates how to prepare yourself for the sighting of an ICE agent.
The strife between political strongholds among the federal, state, and local jurisdictions under the purview of the Trump administration, has fueled tensions on the basis of minute-by-minute policies changing in real-time.
Resources that immigrants can go to regardless of immigration status are the following:
- ACLU Know Your Rightshttps://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/immigrants-rights
- ACLU Derechos de los Inmigrantes https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/derechos-de-los-inmigrantes
Other resources Slice of Culture has reported on include:
Resources and guidelines are provided in the following link here. The resources are provided by the New Jersey Consortium for Immigrant Children, in collaboration with the Rutgers Law School Child Advocacy Clinic, Make the Road NJ, and Legal Services of NJ.
