In his third election campaign, Donald Trump promised to implement a massive deportation program that would target millions of undocumented migrants living in the United States. To that end, the president-elect announced Tom Homan, former head of ICE, as his choice for “border czar,” tasked to oversee federal agents rounding up undocumented migrants, many of whom have stayed in the US for years, or generations, and send them back to their country of origin.

When asked how he would prevent family separation through such a program, Homan replied they could simply deport the whole family. Homan was a contributor to Project 2025 and told FOX News that they would prioritize criminals but said that non-criminals in the US unlawfully should “self-deport” before agents came for them.

There are believed to be approximately 475,000 undocumented immigrants living in New Jersey as of last year. The Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy said “Six states raised more than $1 billion each in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants living within their borders. Those states are California ($8.5 billion), Texas ($4.9 billion), New York ($3.1 billion), Florida ($1.8 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), and New Jersey ($1.3 billion).”

Montclair resident and former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, Jeh Johnson, this week discussed his reservations with the rhetoric surrounding the Trump administration’s plans, both on practical and moral grounds. Acknowledging that it was an issue he himself had to deal with, he told “Unknowns” host Charlie Stone that he would want to prioritize known criminals first and foremost for such a program. “Given the resources that we have devoted to immigration enforcement, you have to make priorities. I would much rather see … ICE/ERO focus on convicted criminals who are undocumented, and sending them back to where they came from, versus sweeping up the husband and wife who’ve been in this country for 10 or 15 years, have a small business someplace, never committed a crime, and have US born, US citizen children. They’re not priorities. In my view, I’d rather see us go after the gang members, the convicted criminals, the so-called Special Interest Aliens that we talk about from the other hemisphere who may be dangerous.” Johnson added that implementing mass deportations is also a legally challenging process, where orders for deportation have to be issued by an immigration court, authorities have to determine whether or not their appeals had been exhausted, and then actually find them.

“That list tends to shrink” Johnson said, “and there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into that. I’d much rather see ICE working with local law enforcement to take custody of someone who’s undocumented the moment they’re released from jail.” Johnson added that mass deportation schemes would “turbocharge” the sanctuary cities movement, where local law enforcement would be ordered not to cooperate with federal authorities. ICE, he said, would become “radioactive” in the eyes of law enforcement.

Democratic governors around the country have already begun to push back against the incoming Trump administration’s plans for raids and mass deportations. Governor Phil Murphy, who has a curiously friendly personal relationship with Donald Trump despite being politically at odds, has said that New Jersey would “fight to the death” to resist the Trump administration if it acted against New Jersey’s “values.” New Jersey’s Attorney General, Matt Platkin, wrote on X/Twitter, “I respect the electoral process and trust in the peaceful transition of power. But if President Trump uses his position to unlawfully attack the rights of New Jersey residents, I will see him in court.”

A coalition of primarily Hispanic civil rights and legal activists on Wednesday held a conference, entitled “We Will Not Back Down,” featuring a nation-wide conversation to discuss a response and plan of action in the face of the upcoming Trump administration’s plans.

The meeting addressed the implications of Trump’s re-election for immigrant rights. Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream Action, emphasized the need for a new political strategy, highlighting the failure of past promises by previous administrations and political leaders, and the urgency of protecting immigrant communities.

“We didn’t just survive Trump’s first presidency,” Rosas said. “We grew. Trump may be reelected but he does not have a mandate to come into and rip apart our communities. We call on elected officials nationwide to use every tool at their disposal to reject Trump’s mass deportation agenda. We also urge the public to get organized now. Together, there is a lot we can do to ensure Trump and his cabinet are not successful in their plans. Our movement is at the vanguard of our fight for change and creating a new politics that centers the working class, Black, brown and immigrant communities nationwide. We will not retreat into fear and despair. We are home. And we are here to stay.”

Other speakers put an emphasis on immigrants’ awareness and education of their own rights while urging collective action to protect at-risk communities. Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative, Vera Institute of Justice, outlined efforts to build a deportation defense network. “We take president-elect Trump at his word that efforts to actualize mass deportations are coming, and that they will be sweeping and indiscriminate. Our immigrant neighbors, including parents, essential workers, and students, will be targeted. We have built and will continue to build a strong deportation defense network that will work tirelessly to ensure that people can legally defend their right to remain in their communities and with their families.”

“The policy proposals of the incoming administration will expand detention, ramp up deportation, strip individuals of vital protections, and deny people a fair hearing in immigration court,” said Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans. “These measures will tear families apart and uproot long-standing community members from their homes and workplaces. The ripple effects will be felt across neighborhoods, schools, the economy, and the nation. Together we will resist mass detention and deportation, defend family unity, and continue to work with our partners and elected officials across the nation toward a future where no one is left alone in defense of their freedom.”

All of the speakers urged the Biden administration to use their remaining time in power to implement what they can to protect people from forcible deportation, touting pieces of legislation such as the Shield Act and Fairness to Freedom Act. They also discussed plans to work with state, county, and municipal leaders to ensure that these law enforcement resources are not allocated or appropriated by federal immigration authorities.

To find out what actions can be expected in more concrete terms, as far as New Jersey is concerned, Insider NJ spoke with Amol Sinha, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Sinha said that the ACLU advocates for the passage of the Immigrant Trust Act in the New Jersey legislature to create a “firewall” between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities with the priority being to avoid the separation of families.

“We can protect New Jerseyans against the worst instincts of the Trump administration,” Sinha told Insider NJ. “I think we have to take Trump at his word that he’s planning on deporting a million people a year throughout his administration, and the way you get to that is not by doing it piecemeal, but by doing it in droves. [Trump] is planning on the ugliest and worst deportation scheme that we’ve ever seen in the history of the United States, and it’s going to include going after the most vulnerable among us. It’s going to include racial profiling. It’s going to include workplace raids and community raids. It’s all stuff that’s very frightening and we as a state need to come together, push back and fight back against that wherever we can. If the first Trump administration is any indication, there’s going to be chaos and confusion, family separation.”

When asked to respond to Tom Homan’s remarks that families could be deported entirely to avoid separation, Sinha had a warning. “I hope folks know that that means US citizens as well. There is no siloed, isolated undocumented community. What we have in the United States are undocumented people that live among us and that are part of mixed-status families. You may have a situation where mom and dad are DACA recipients and they have children who are US citizens because they were born in the United States, and grandma and granddad are undocumented, and they all live together in the same house in Middlesex County. What does that mean for that family? If any one of those folks in that family is at risk, it’s going to mean family separation, and it’s heartbreaking because at least two generations of a family are affected. We know a lot of people in those circumstances, at least two generations of a family that knows no other country than the United States. We must take Trump at his word that he’s going to go after families like that, and in New Jersey, where we have one of the densest populations of immigrants in the United States and one of the most diverse states in the country, it’s going to impact us uniquely and disproportionately.”

As every advocacy organization had taken on the same mantra of “take him at his word” and “don’t wait,” Sinha said that not taking steps now would be to the detriment of undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in the state, potentially facing their families being torn apart.

“Our economy is made up of humans and people are the workforce in our economy,” Sinha said. “The immigrant community members, whether they’re documented or undocumented, are some of the frontline workers. They are workers in every industry. They are doing jobs that citizens and other folks sometimes do not want to do. There are certain industries that would crumble without undocumented labor, and that includes the restaurant and farming industry in New Jersey. As we think about where our food comes from, we think about the folks that we’re seeing for services, including doctors in some instances, and lawyers.”

Sinha said that his own family comes from an immigrant background. “It breaks my heart to think about how families who have undocumented people, DACA recipients, people with work authorization, and US citizen children would be torn apart because of the cruelty of the Trump administration. We have to do whatever we can to resist that from a human perspective, from an economic perspective and from a policy perspective.”

Homan had said that Democratic governors can “get the hell out of the way” if they do not wish to comply with federal deportation programs.

Given the federalist design of the United States, there are limits on what state, county, and local governments can do, but Sinha said that there remain options just the same. “There are steps that the state can take right now that can help protect against these sorts of mass deportation schemes. The federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement, and therefore they can come into the state and initiate deportations and detain people, and that’s a really scary thing when you give that power to President Trump. But what the state can do is put up barriers and make it harder for the federal government to be able to sow that kind of chaos in our state, and one of the things that we’ve been advocating for is called the Immigrant Trust Act. This would create a firewall between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities so that we aren’t in the position of having deputized local law enforcement doing the federal government’s bidding. It creates better and more trusting communities, because immigrant New Jerseyans won’t be afraid that every time they interact with law enforcement, it’s going to lead to their own or their family members deportation. If the state legislature can pass the Immigrant Trust Act, that’s one step that we could take in moving in the right direction to protect New Jerseyans from unjust deportation.”

While the state decides whether to take legislative action, municipalities also have some tools at their disposal, according to Sinha. “First of all, municipalities can be as welcoming as possible,” Sinha said. “Let’s not do the thing that Mayor Sam Joshi of Edison did, where he tried to send a busload of folks back to Texas when they were being sent from Texas up to New Jersey. Let’s try to make sure that our cities are offering services to people that are within city lines, regardless of their immigration status.”

Mayor Joshi is a Democrat and said that Edison did not have the financial resources to absorb and house undocumented immigrants being brought in. His remarks, however, sparked a firestorm of backlash from other Edison officials and residents. The municipality itself has a very large immigrant community, nearly half the population.

Sinha said that cities should never inquire about the immigration status of their residents. “There’s no reason to. There’s nothing that cities do in the vein of immigration enforcement that would require any city agency or municipality to inquire about somebody’s status, or their social security number, or anything like that. It would be better for everybody if cities and municipalities didn’t take any steps to collect information around somebody’s immigration status or their social security number. There are certain things that cities can do in the provision of benefits that would protect and safeguard their local residents, and also they should comply proactively with what’s called the Immigrant Trust Directive from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, and the eventual Immigrant Trust Act from the legislature. These reiterate to their law enforcement that they should not comply with federal immigration enforcement and make sure that they’re not asking about immigration status when they interact with community members.”

Overlapping federal immigration law enforcement with local law enforcement would lead to a breakdown in trust between undocumented residents and the police, leading to more opportunities for crime to go under-reported or un-reported.

Sinha recounted a situation in New Jersey where a group of immigrants had legal standing to remain in the US per an arrangement with the federal government but had become targeted by the Trump administration. “In the middle of the first Trump presidency, as we saw in several instances, the Trump administration was going after communities that were the most vulnerable. One of those communities was right here in New Jersey, in Middlesex County. This was a community of Indonesian Christians that came into the country in the 90s seeking asylum, but for whatever reason, their asylum applications had been denied. Eventually, they all had final orders of removal against them. They entered into an agreement under the Bush administration that said that if they continued to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on an annual basis, that they would be granted what’s called a ‘stay of removal’. They would be able to stay in the United States for another year, and they checked in religiously year after year after year. But when Trump came into office, he saw a community that had final orders of removal against them, and this was some low hanging fruit. They all lived in the same general vicinity in Highland Park and other parts of Middlesex County. He sent his agents after them. Two of the men were picked up after dropping off their daughters at school, were detained, and the entire community decided to take sanctuary in their church.”

With lawyers and paralegals, Sinha said that he went into that church and interviewed every person who was taking sanctuary there. He estimated this was forty families. An emergency petition for a restraining order against the federal government was filed. “I remember it vividly. It was February of 2018 and that evening, we were granted the temporary restraining order, and the federal government was no longer allowed to go after them. In the meantime, we paired up everybody in that class of people that we represented with their own lawyers, they were able to open up their immigration cases. Every single person in that class has been able to stay in the United States and it is a remarkable story of the work that we must do in order to save this entire community from deportation.” Sinha said that he had heard from one of their plaintiffs recently that his son was going to enter MIT in the fall. “That wouldn’t have been possible had they been separated or deported. That, to me, is what this is all about. What we’re trying to do is keep families together, and New Jersey should stand up and say, ‘in New Jersey, families will not be at risk.’ We’re going to keep families together and not allow the Trump administration to tear them apart.”