By Frank Mustac, Contributor
Less than a week after President Donald Trump announced a string of executive orders aimed at defunding municipalities that seek to protect undocumented individuals, the Hopewell Borough Council voted in favor of becoming a “sanctuary city.”, A resolution formalizing that designation was approved during the Feb. 2 meeting after an impassioned, yet civil debate by the governing body., Ultimately, it took a tie-breaking vote by Mayor Paul Anzano to pass the resolution after a split vote from the six-member council., “Though largely a symbolic gesture, the resolution does put a stake in the ground and affirm the existing practices that law enforcement is responsible for in Hopewell Borough,” the mayor said after the meeting. “More importantly, the resolution proudly affirms the culture that is present here; the culture and community that is Hopewell Borough.”, Under the approved resolution, borough employees will be instructed to “refuse the application of any request from a state or federal agency that requires the identification of a resident’s immigration status.”, Borough Council members and Democrats Chris Fossel, Debra Lehman and David Mackie voted in favor of the township becoming a sanctuary city, while Republicans Robert Lewis, Schuyler Morehouse and Shelby Tewell voted against it., Mayor Anzano said he put the resolution before the council because he felt moved by President Trump’s immigration policies, including the travel ban from seven majority Muslim countries., Undocumented residents from other countries, as well as those who are legally in the United States, he said, often do not answer the door at home and do not participate in the community because they live in fear of authorities., “They live in the shadows. It’s not a world we know,” Mayor Anzano said. “We need to state as a borough council that we believe in certain things – that immigrants and people relocating here will not be scared into an invisible world.”, Last month, President Trump signed a pair of executive orders that pushed for the construction of a wall along the southern border with Mexico, adding more border patrol officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, stripping federal funding from sanctuary cities, among other measures., He also set priorities for deporting those who have been convicted of criminal offenses, charged with offenses or met other criteria outlined in the executive order. One expert said the policy would “essentially” target “violent criminal aliens.”, Prior to its introduction, the mayor said he consulted with the Mercer County Prosecutors Office, Hopewell Valley Regional School District Superintendent Thomas Smith and the Hopewell Township Police Department., “It’s more possible than probable that some federal agency like ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) would come here and ask us to enforce the immigration laws, and what we’re saying by becoming a sanctuary city is we will not do that,” he said., According to a state Attorney General’s directive from 2007, law enforcement across New Jersey must notify federal authorities when they arrest an illegal immigrant for drunken driving or an indictable offense., Hopewell Borough Councilwoman Lehman joined in on the mayor’s support for the resolution., “Isn’t it our job to make a statement of what kind of community we are? If we don’t make this stand, our constituents are not going to be happy,” she said., Councilman Morehouse, who voted against the measure, seemed particularly opposed to the use of the word “sanctuary,” asserting that the word offers “false hope.”, “This community is welcoming in a broad spectrum of ways,” he said. “(But) as far as I’m concerned, it’s not our fight nor do we have jurisdiction to make that fight.”, Though he did not want to thrust the borough into a national debate, Councilman Morehouse agreed that federal immigration laws are “convoluted, poorly written and poorly implemented, because if they were fully implemented, chances are likely we would not have a situation we have in the United States right now.”, “(Undocumented individuals) are working for cash, they are working and hiding themselves and not able to take advantage of all of the wonders we have in the United States,” Councilman Morehouse said. “To me, that needs to change. But it isn’t going to be us. It’s going to be federal immigration law that needs to change.”
