By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert said Wednesday that her community, home to large numbers of illegal immigrants from Central America, would not be impacted by steps President Donald J. Trump took this week to defund municipalities that shield people living in the country illegally., The mayor, in a statement released hours after the president’s announcement concerning that and other immigration-related measures he was taking through executive orders, said the town would seek to remain a “welcoming community,” a term that she has used in lieu of sanctuary city., “We recognize the valuable contributions our immigrant residents make to our town,” Mayor Lempert said in the statement. “It’s important for Princeton to safeguard our values of inclusiveness and welcome, and to ensure we stay a safe community for all.”, The town, which does get money from the federal government, and some others around New Jersey follow a policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Princeton, among other things, will not comply with civil detainer requests or administrative holds immigration authorities put on people whom police have arrested., Town officials, including police Chief Nicholas K. Sutter, have said police do not enforce immigration law., “The issue I think that I find from my perspective that’s confusing for many people is that we, as local law enforcement, are just not trained and don’t have the authority to engage in the same activities that federal law enforcement do,” Chief Sutter said Thursday., Based on 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, however. Chief Sutter said the department follows that directive., At the beginning of the year, the town indicated that it expected to be on the opposite side of Mr. Trump on immigration issues. During the presidential campaign, he pledged to take a hard line on illegal immigration. And on Wednesday, he sought to make good on those promises., He announced a series of steps that he took through two executive orders that include starting constructing 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., “A nation without borders is not a nation,” he said. “Beginning (Wednesday), the United States of America gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders.”, As part of his actions, 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.”, “These are the folks that should be given priority in terms of removal procedures and kind of actually enforcing our immigration laws against them,” said Ana Quintana, a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “They should not be protected and they shouldn’t be shielded.”, “I think both sides of the aisle, both political sides of the aisle, both parties, should be able to agree that if you’ve been deported from this country five, six times and you’re still coming back and you’re still committing crimes in this country, there’s a problem and that needs to be rectified,” she said., But one Princeton-based immigration attorney who has worked with the town to educate immigrants on what to do when confronted by ICE agents called the president’s actions “an assault on compassion.”, “I think Trump is doing exactly what he said he was going to do. So all the talk about, ‘Do you take him seriously, do you take him literally?’, well we now know we can take him literally and seriously,” said lawyer Ryan Stark Lilienthal on Thursday. “He’s taking a very hard-line approach on immigration. And kind of the larger theme is that this is an approach (that) will undermine the fabric of communities … especially in communities that want to act in compassionate ways toward their immigrant population, both documented and undocumented.”, Councilwoman Heather H. Howard on Wednesday was critical of the president and at the same time insisting the town is not a sanctuary city., “I find (Wednesday’s) actions really disturbing, and I’m proud that we’re a welcoming community,” she said. “But my first reaction is that it’s very concerning his actions with regard to immigration, very disturbing. And we’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing.”, Yet Mr. Trump’s actions have possible implications for local police departments. One of his orders said, in part, that “it is the policy of the executive branch to empower state and local law enforcement agencies across the country to perform the functions of an immigration officer in the interior of the United States to the maximum extent permitted by law.”, Princeton officials will have to scrutinize the president’s orders., “We’re going to have to analyze what this means,” Ms. Howard said., Princeton has a number of residents living in the country illegally, largely in the Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood. The town has tried to foster good relations with the immigrant community, Mayor Lempert said, so that immigrants are “comfortable” cooperating with police., “I think that there needs to be a continued sensitivity, especially in police law enforcement. I’ve seen it in Princeton, with domestic violence and petty robbery and assaults,” said Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-15), also the town’s municipal prosecutor. “You want to get the victims’ cooperation so you don’t want to end up being a thing where you’re going to make them uncomfortable to come to police. So there is a benefit to having so-called sanctuary cities. At the same time, if there is a felony or a third drunken driving, they have been referred to immigration.”
