WASHINGTON — The privately-run Delaney Hall detention center may remain a divisive issue in New Jersey, but both Democrats and Republicans living in the most competitive congressional district in the Garden State agree on one thing: Most immigrants shouldn’t be rounded up and deported but allowed to remain in the U.S.
That’s the result of a University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation survey of 500 adults in the 7th Congressional District, where Rep. Tom Kean (R-Westfield) is facing former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett.
Almost three-fourths of 7th CD residents — 73% — favor allowing undocumented immigrants who have lived here for years and have not committed any crimes to receive legal status if they pay a penalty and any back taxes. That includes 82% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans.
Even larger majorities — 80% — giving a path to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. as children, known as dreamers, and have not committed serious crimes. That includes 88% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans.
They also favor efforts to increase the number of work visas and require employers to verify the legal status of their workers (79%, including 83% of Democrats and 74% of Republicans) and to hire hundreds of additional judges and staff to speed up the time it takes to review asylum claims (73% overall, including 78% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans).
“On immigration and a lot of other issues, we don’t see huge differences,” said Charles Lewitus, associate director of the Program for Public Consultation. “We see pretty large common grounds among the American people throughout the country in areas where you think they’d be huge division, so for us that’s been a very interesting finding,”
Bennett supports allowing immigrants to remain in the U.S. who have not committed violent crimes, while deporting those who have, spokeswoman Carly Jones said.
“Rebecca supports secure borders and removing violent criminals to keep our communities safe. In Congress, she’ll work with anyone to fix our broken immigration system, give law enforcement the resources they need to crack down on fentanyl and violent crime, and expand pathways to citizenship for DACA recipients and law-abiding residents,” Jones said.
Kean, who has voted to increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not respond to requests for comment.
The same consensus can be found in the 9th Congressional District, where Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) is being challenged by Republican Rosemary Pino. House Republicans still see that race as competitive even though two independent publications that track congressional elections, the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections, both make Pou a strong favorite to retain the seat.
In that district, 78% of residents support allowing immigrants who have lived here for a long time and committed no crimes to remain in the U.S. after paying fines and back taxes, including 84% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans; 83% backed letting dreamers stay, including 85% of Democrats and 81% of Republicans; and 85% favored deporting criminals, including 86% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans.
Democratic members of the House regularly have sought to visit Delaney Hall, where three detainees have died. One such visit resulted in a scuffle with Rep LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), who was arrested and charged with assaulting and interfering with federal officers during the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
Rep. Analilia Mejia (D-Glen Ridge), who recently returned from a visit to Delaney Hall, said the people she talks to understand that the people being arrested are not the “worst of the worst” but rather “grandmothers and gardeners.”
“The folks who are getting arrested are getting arrested at work, are getting arrested at court appointments, they’re getting arrested at the hospital, we’re taking children,” Mejia said. “And it’s just completely evident to my constituents, and I think to the American people, that Donald Trump is trafficking or attempting to traffic in hate in order to sell like chaos in our communities, and we’re disgusted on top of it.”
Despite the surveys showing common ground on immigration and ways to address the issue, those aren’t the solutions being debated in Congress, Lewitus said.
“What we do know is that the public from recent surveys and from surveys over many years, the public really feels that they are not listened to by elected officials, they feel like that elected officials do what the public would do about less than half the time and they really want to see elected officials take into account public opinion like this,” he said.
The surveys of 500 adults in each district were conducted May 28 to June 23, and had confidence intervals — equivalent to margins of errors for polls — of +/-6.1% in the 7th District and +/-6.0% in the 9th District.