McIver, fellow Delaney Hall Dems come to sanctuary cities’ defense in letter to Trump admin

Two weeks ago, an effort by President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security to name and shame America’s “sanctuary jurisdictions” that protected illegal immigrants ran into some serious issues the moment it was launched. The administration’s list included and excluded cities and counties seemingly at random, mystifying Republicans in conservative areas like New Jersey’s Warren County that were put on the list, and it was pulled a few days later.

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), though, argues that the list’s faults go far deeper than that. McIver and fellow Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) and Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), who have famously joined McIver on immigration-related issues in the past, wrote in a letter to top Trump officials that any attempt to target sanctuary jurisdictions – regardless of how accurate the list may be – is an affront to the independence of cities in New Jersey and elsewhere.

“This blatant attempt to intimidate local governments into abandoning policies designed to foster cooperation between immigrant communities and law enforcement is not only misguided – it is dangerous,” states the letter, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “The inclusion of New Jersey and other states’ jurisdictions on this list is a politically motivated attack on our nation’s values and an insult to the rule of law.”

When he first took office in 2018, Gov. Phil Murphy declared New Jersey to be a sanctuary state (a term with many political connotations but no concrete definition), and his administration has policies in place that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Some of the state’s most progressive cities have similarly declared themselves havens for immigrants regardless of their legal status, prompting the Trump administration to sue four of them – Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Hoboken – for allegedly shielding undocumented immigrants from prosecution.

The Trump administration has generally argued that any politicians or jurisdictions that proclaim their sanctuary status are defending illegal immigrants at the expense of their own constituents. “These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said when her department released its initial troubled list.

McIver, though, told the New Jersey Globe that she believes New Jersey’s sanctuary cities aren’t violating the law, and that punishing them for their pro-immigrant values is unacceptable.

“To say that these cities are sanctuary cities, so we’re not going to give them any federal support, we’re not going to give them any federal money – what are you going to start doing? Not funding Head Start? What are we talking about here?” she said. “It’s unfair, it’s unjust, it’s unconstitutional, and this administration should not be doing that.”

McIver herself has been at the center of recent immigration-related debates thanks to an incident last month at Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention facility that McIver, Menendez, and Watson Coleman visited for an oversight tour. A scuffle broke out after federal agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for trespassing; those charges were later dropped, but McIver now faces charges for allegedly assaulting DHS officers at the scene, alternately making her into hero or a villain for liberals and conservatives around the country.

The congresswoman, though, said that she wants the original purpose of the Delaney Hall visit – seeing the conditions at the facility and those detained there – to remain relevant, too. Today’s letter, she said, is also part of that project to defend New Jersey’s immigrants, legal or otherwise.

As for the inaccuracies of the DHS’s list, Democrats have put forward a number of theories as to what went wrong, with Virginia’s U.S. Senators speculating that artificial intelligence may have been involved. McIver, for her part, said it was par for the course with the Trump administration.

“This is this administration. They are unprofessional; they do not know what they’re doing,” she said. “This is what we expect every day from them.”