A pro-sanctuary city congresswoman complained Tuesday that deportation officers did not give advance notice to local or state authorities before conducting arrests in the area.
New Jersey Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman delivered a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailing her issues with a recent ICE raid in her district, and included questions she wants answered about ICE policy. Deportation officers on July 10 arrested one illegal migrant and attempted to apprehend another, but were blocked by activists who were actively attempting to thwart ICE’s actions, according to the agency.
On the day of the incident, Watson Coleman issued a press release saying she was “horrified” by the details and said she was working to obtain more information from federal agencies. On Tuesday, she submitted the letter to ICE detailing the incident and demanding a slate of answers about the agency’s standard protocols.
“In addition to the conduct of the agents themselves, I have serious questions as to the process that preceded this operation, and the transparency of the federal agencies involved,” the New Jersey Democrat wrote to ICE. “It is my understanding that these agents did not provide any advance notice to state or local authorities prior to their arrival, and they did not identify themselves as federal agents once in the municipality.”
Watson Coleman, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2015 and is a member of the left-wing Congressional Progressive Caucus, has made several statements during her career supportive of sanctuary cities.
“Our caucus is trying to support cities that are sanctuary cities [for undocumented immigrants] or that want to be sanctuary cities,” the lawmaker said during a September 2017 fundraiser in Newark, which is a self-declared sanctuary city, according to local media.
In a July 2017 tweet thread, Watson Coleman also attacked legislation that, if passed, would require sanctuary cities to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, or else lose federal funding. The lawmaker went on to note that immigration enforcement is solely the responsibility of the federal government, saying, “It is callous to punish local agencies for not performing duties entrusted 2 our federal partners.”
Watson Coleman also spoke out against then-President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to pull federal funding from sanctuary cities, saying the move would “hamstring local law enforcement with the responsibilities that we entrust to our federal partners,” according to NJ Spotlight News.
While there is no official definition of a “sanctuary city,” the policies generally limit cooperation between local, state police and federal immigration authorities. Sanctuary city ordinances typically prohibit local police from honoring ICE detainer requests or from notifying ICE agents about an upcoming release of an inmate wanted by federal immigration authorities.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Watson Coleman’s office and asked if her support for sanctuary city policy conflicts with her complaint about ICE not notifying local authorities before the July 10 apprehension, and also asked if the lawmaker believes ICE should notify local police before every apprehension, but her office did not immediately respond.
In her letter to ICE, Watson Coleman asked for the “notification process prior to a raid” and whether there is “a chain of command on the ground that includes local, county, or state officials,” among other questions for the agency.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration enforcement, lists the entire state of New Jersey as a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants, citing a detainer policy established in 2019 by the state’s attorney general at the time.
The ICE apprehension on July 10 in Princeton garnered media attention after deportation officers arrested one illegal immigrant, but then mistook an individual for one of their other targets, according to a statement from the agency.
“On the same date, officers spotted an individual who fit the description of the second person. They identified themselves as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and after a brief discussion, recognized that he was not the subject,” ICE stated, and added that deportation officers let the individual go and “never” restrained or placed him into custody.
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