Following recent ICE arrests in South Orange and Maplewood, South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum sent a letter on Friday to Governor Mikie Sherrill seeking expedited disbursement of the funds that the state committed to the Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative (DDDI).
While Collum said she is grateful for the state’s commitment of $20.2 million to the initiative, she said she recently learned that the funding has not yet been disbursed to the service providers responsible for “putting the [DDDI ]resources to work.”
The funds are urgently needed, she wrote, to hire and train attorneys and paralegals, expand intake capacity, and build the legal infrastructure necessary to respond to emergency habeas and other federal litigation.
“They simply do not have a minute to lose,” Collum wrote in the letter she shared with the Village Green. “We have experienced firsthand why this matters. Recent ICE activity in South Orange and surrounding communities resulted in individuals being taken into custody and families suddenly trying to locate loved ones and understand what could be done. A local DDDI attorney and her colleague, working through Legal Services of New Jersey, became a critical front line of defense, filing habeas corpus petitions in federal court. Individuals were subsequently released from detention and reunited with their families.”
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Collum has been actively involved in seeking information and assistance and providing updates about those who were recently taken into ICE custody in the community.
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In her letter to the governor, Collum explained that a “local DDDI attorney and her colleague, working through Legal Services of New Jersey, became a critical front line of defense, filing habeas corpus petitions in federal court.”
“Individuals were subsequently released from detention and reunited with their families,” Collum wrote. “Without that immediate legal response, individuals taken from our communities could have been transferred outside New Jersey before meaningful legal intervention could occur. People are being detained, families are seeking help, and attorneys are successfully using our federal courts to challenge the lawfulness of detention and protect the due process rights of those in custody.”
Collum gave South Orange-Maplewood community members credit for jumping in and using its resources and connections to help those detained by ICE, but noted that “meaningful access to due process should not depend on where someone is detained or the resources of the community that happens to surround them.”
Read Collum’s full letter here:
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