Freeholders Support Sheriff’s Agreement with ICE

CREST HAVEN – Freeholders approved a resolution July 23 which supported Sheriff Robert Nolan’s execution of an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to extend the 287(g) program at the Cape May County Correctional Facility for another 10 years.
Nolan was undersheriff when former Sheriff Gary Schaffer entered into the original agreement with ICE in 2017.
The program gives three corrections officers, who were trained at a federal training facility, the ability to check if incarcerated individuals at the county jail are wanted by ICE, and then to notify ICE of their whereabouts.
Nolan said he would never allow the officers “to go into homes and tear families apart.”
“The only time that my three people inside the jail come in contact with them (immigrants) is once they get arrested and are put in the jail,” he continued.
Freeholder Director Gerald Thornton said four individuals have been deported since the program began. He cited one individual in the jail “who’s currently on a detainer who was charged with aggravated sexual assault on a minor and endangering the welfare of a minor. Under this program right now, he will be sentenced, and then right after the sentence will be released.”
Nolan identified a second individual, an immigrant from Ukraine, who was brought into the jail July 22. Nolan said the individual was arrested twice before coming to Wildwood, where “he was charged with attempting to stab another individual.”
He was wanted by ICE, said Nolan, because he arrived in the U.S. in 2015 under a work visa, and overextended his stay. “I simply notified them (ICE), and they put a detainer on him and they handled him,” Nolan continued.
Several spoke against the resolution. They cited the “Immigrant Trust Directive” issued by Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal Nov. 29, 2018.
According to a release, the directive prohibited state law enforcement agencies from entering or renewing 287(g) agreements with federal authorities, “unless the attorney general grants written approval or the agreement is necessary in response to threats arising from a declared state or national emergency.”
The directive “seeks to ensure that immigrants feel safe reporting crimes to New Jersey law enforcement officers.”
Jacob Perskie, a Board of Trustees member for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said, “These 287(g) agreements make us all less safe, and they do that because they require local jail officers to carry out the duties of ICE agents, and when local sheriffs deputize their sheriffs and their jail officers to act as ICE agents, immigrant communities, immigrants and U.S. citizens alike, become afraid to call the Sheriff’s Office to report crimes to assist law enforcement.
“I would hope that the members of this board would agree that’s not something we want to encourage in Cape May County,” he continued.
The 287(g) program “creates terror in many good, hard-working people that live amongst us,” said Dr. Steven Fenichel, of Ocean City.
Nolan said 287(g) is “strengthening the trust with the immigrant community because these immigrants aren’t forced to have to rat that person out. They’re found by committing another crime and brought into our jail.”
The effective date of the directive was March 15. Nolan said he renewed the contract with ICE Feb. 5, which was scheduled to expire June 30.
“I did it (renewed the contract) before March 15, so I didn’t have to comply with the directive,” said Nolan.   
He said he believed the directive was unjust, “and I’m asking for help in trying to determine if the attorney general really has the right to tell me … not to work with fellow federal law enforcement. I don’t know.”
He said if he was wrong he would “acquiesce” to the attorney general’s “commands.”
County Counsel Jeffrey Lindsay said the directive is unenforceable.
“The attorney general is obligated to follow certain requirements, according to the Administrative Procedures Act,” said Lindsay. “He’s (Grewal) required to have a notice and hearing provision before issuing directives that impact the public. He didn’t do that.”
According to a previous Herald report, a letter from the Attorney General’s Office July 6 states the attorney general will issue a directive Aug. 6, which would prohibit officers in Cape May County “from exercising their law enforcement authority in connection with your recently renewed 287(g) agreement.”
The attorney general would reconsider whether to issue that directive if the Sheriff’s Office provides information, including a copy of the agreement between the county and ICE, along with a statement signed by Nolan as to why the agreement should remain in effect, the letter continued.
Freeholder Will Morey said he was willing to support the resolution but that he’d like the attorney general to be advised that the rule-making process was not followed, as stated by Lindsay.
Nolan agreed. He told freeholders he was drafting a response to the attorney general, and that he was “going to come into as much compliance as I can.”
The resolution passed unanimously.