New Jersey residents can upload videos of ICE activity to a new state portal

With Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ramping up raids and operations in New Jersey and across the region, Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Thursday unveiled the  Know Your Rights Information Hub, an online portal, where residents can upload cellphone videos of ICE activity in the Garden State. The website is available in 22 languages.

The portal, which Sherill first mentioned during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last month, will warn New Jerseyans in immigrant communities about ICE agent sightings and hold federal agents accountable, she said. The information will not be shared with the public.

Sherrill said the portal will help hold ICE agents accountable.

“[It’s] to track their actions, collect information and use it to spot patterns that can inform our response as a state, including in court,” she said.

She stressed that residents should remain safe when they video ICE activity.

“People should record from a safe distance,” she said. “Send us your videos and help to keep New Jersey safe.”

Sherrill also signed an executive order prohibiting ICE from using state property to stage civil immigration enforcement operations. She added that immigration agents are not allowed to enter places like state offices or college dormitories without a judicial warrant.

“That means no processing locations, no operating bases, no federal, civil immigration actions run from any state grounds, not our parks, not our roadways, not our buildings,” she said.  “And they can’t send agents looking for people in nonpublic areas, like state offices, childcare centers, college dorms or senior homes without a warrant signed by a judge.”

Sherrill clarified that ICE agents cannot be legally barred from carrying out a raid on a New Jersey street.

New York launched a similar portal last October to collect videos and photos.

On Wednesday, Assemblywoman Annette Quijano, D-Union, said in a statement that she is introducing a measure prohibiting ICE from using property owned or controlled by a municipality or the state. The news release said the bill will specify that parking lots, vacant lots and garages owned or controlled by a town, county or the state may not be used as staging areas, processing locations or operational bases for federal civil immigration.

The legislation calls for standardized signage, stating that such property could not be used for immigration enforcement staging. It will also include a provision for some private property owners, including businesses, faith institutions, medical providers, and nonprofits, to request similar signage.

In her statement, Quijano said that “public property exists to serve our communities — not to be used in ways that spread fear.”

Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, supports these latest initiatives.

“We need a constellation of policies, including legislation and executive actions and directives from the Attorney General that will help us get there to a place where ICE is held more accountable to the communities that it’s inflicting pain upon,” he said.

He said the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis were examples of ICE’s “recklessness and lawlessness.”

“They are out of control; they are designed in this moment to occupy cities and inflict violence upon their communities,” Sinha said.

Sinha said the governor’s executive order prohibiting ICE from operating on state property sends an important message.

“It is something that says we as New Jersey will no longer be complicit with ICE’s lawlessness in our state,” he said.

Itzel Hernandez, an organizer in New Jersey with American Friends Service Committee, an immigrant rights group, said the portal is one tool, but Sherrill needs to take additional steps to protect immigrants.

“One of them includes increasing their budget for DDDI, which is the detention, deportation defense initiative,” she said. “It provides legal representation for people who do not have the resources to cover a private attorney.”

She said the new portal will help alert community members about ICE activity, but it won’t prevent agents from taking people into custody.

“The first line of defense should always be the people that are most directly impacted, and they are asking for an increase in legal defense,” Hernandez said.

President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi have opposed efforts to track ICE activity, claiming that it puts agents at risk.