How ICE hurts all of Trenton
It was just after 6 am, and in an attempt to hit snooze on my phone, I accidentally hit “reject call”. But as Trenton NAACP President, I knew getting a call this early in the morning could only mean one thing: time to get to work. This time, this call was to protect an immigrant family from another pre-dawn ICE raid in Trenton. So I returned the call, left the warmth and safety of my home and family to go out and help protect another’s.
Unfortunately, Trenton has not been spared from the realities of these times or this federal administration. The day after I received this call, I had to put on my school board hat (and thank you, Trenton, to the 8,000+ voters who re-elected me back into my school board seat) when another local immigrant community member sent me a Washington Post article entitled: “In Cities Targeted by ICE, Empty Desks and School Disruptions Follow.” And that article sums up what I’ve been saying for years in these roles: that ICE presence in Trenton is extremely disruptive to everyone in our entire community.
To give an example, we, with the Trenton School Board, have been dealing with a chronic student absenteeism issue for years. And we’ve tried many options to solve this on both an individual and macro level, including individual counseling with students and families, giving out free alarm clocks, and even sending out paper surveys attached to student report cards for parents to fill out so we could better understand the root causes of absenteeism, with legal action being our last resort.
But still, the problem persisted. What were we missing?
Soon, the answer to that question became painfully clear: a major reason for this absenteeism is that our students don’t feel safe leaving their homes, fearing they will be taken by ICE regardless of their citizenship status or that they won’t have parents to come home to. For example, our Trenton School District has had the largest dip in student attendance following Trump’s re-election, most notably culminating in an almost 10% one-day dip during the Day Without Immigrants event.
Now, I’m not advocating to restrict the exercise of free speech or even obstructing a law enforcement operation. Still, that cause and effect is dangerously apparent: our children – Black, Latino, Haitian, Guatemalan, Ecuadorian, West African, Caribbean, Central and South American, and all others – are less likely to come to school with the looming threat of ICE hanging over their heads.
Now, many may wonder how this affects Trentonians as a collective. This seems like an individual student, family, or immigrant community’s problem, right?
Wrong.
Each day a student is out of school, their learning loss compounds. And unfortunately, this results in worse overall test scores–resulting in less education funding for all Trenton students–less teachers, less books, less technology.
Overall, a lesser Trenton.
How? Well, every New Jersey school district is graded under the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum or QSAC. This QSAC Score, scored on a scale of 0-100, evaluates each district’s overall performance in Instruction and Programming, Personnel, Fiscal Management, Operations Management, and Governance. This score determines a school district’s annual funding amount. And since an overwhelming 85% of our annual $500M school budget is funded by the state (with only 5% of our budget actually being funded by Trenton City Council’s property taxes, fun fact), we have every incentive in the District to aim to score high with the State!
However, despite our repeated success in receiving 100’s in Personnel, Fiscal Management, Operations Management, and Governance, every single time the Trenton School District is graded, we routinely score lower in Instruction and Programming, partly because the State evaluates items such as Districtwide absenteeism rates, classroom performance, and how well all students do overall on mandatory state and national tests. Look at it like this: if we have a sizeable amount of students that routinely do not show up to class, the District loses points. Now these students are behind on the days they do show up and, unfortunately, begin to fail in class, causing the District to further lose points. Additionally, when these students score lower when being tested for the SATs and the mandated NJ English, Math, and Science tests, the District loses even more points and loses even more State money.
And no, we as a District cannot, and we will not remove these students based on citizenship status. Under both the United States and New Jersey Constitutions and laws, every child, regardless of citizenship status, is entitled to a free public school education, which is an ideal handed down from the Founding Fathers themselves. And even if the law were not in favor of Trenton’s undocumented children, we would still not remove them, for doing so would disrupt the arc of the moral universe from reaching its destination of justice.
This trend, caused by forces outside of Trenton, cannot stand. It flies in the face of what we hold dear as a Trenton community.
For example, I’m proud to have pushed for the Trenton School Board to pass the Safe Zone School Policy 5111A, which limits our cooperation with ICE, especially by prohibiting staff from allowing ICE or other immigration agents into schools or providing them with student information without a judicial warrant.
Under my leadership as President of the Trenton NAACP, we’ve had our first, but definitely not our last, Immigrant Rights Conference, which informed the entire Trenton community of the rights of our immigrant community, including their rights for free speech, to assemble, to an attorney, to be silent and not answer questions to incriminate oneself, and all other rights afforded under the Constitution.
And while I worked as Deputy Attorney General at the Attorney General’s Office, I worked to establish the Immigrant Trust Directive and helped draft and testify at the New Jersey Statehouse in favor of the proposed Immigrant Trust Act which is still currently pending before the New Jersey Legislature right now (call your New Jersey Senator and Assemblypeople and show your support for this bill today so it doesn’t die before becoming a law at the end of the year).
Why? Because these policies are rooted in keeping our community safe.
When immigrant communities cannot safely come forward and talk to the police about real threats in the community without the risk of being deported themselves just for doing the right thing, then crime festers and spills out into all streets in Trenton. Besides, the Immigrant Trust Directive and the Immigrant Trust Act are ideals that even law enforcement on the front line support to help them do their job, so why shouldn’t we?
What also deeply worries me are the many disturbing images we’ve all seen online, where it almost seems as if our Trenton Police are being used as a proxy, if not actively participating, as ICE agents themselves, eroding the trust they have built up over time in the immigrant community to fight crime.
Furthermore, when ICE agents are in our neighborhoods, that eventually means additional policing in all of our neighborhoods, a result I’m sure none of us want. This is not the Trenton I grew up in. This is not the Trenton I know all of us want to live in, be a part of, or raise our own children in.
ICE presence in Trenton has a net negative effect not just in our schools, but in our community overall. I was at a recent Capital City Community Coalition (4C’s) meeting where I had to use my years of prosecutorial questioning skills to get the ICE agents in suits to “testify” before the crowd that they are executing only “targeted” operations.
But I can’t do this alone; none of us can. We all will have to hold their feet to the fire to ensure Trenton does not become like Chicago, LA, Charlotte, or other Trump ICE-targeted cities. Our children and the future of our city depend on it.
This Op-Ed is written by Austin Edwards
