Ciattarelli is a fascist, Sherrill is a fraud, and Kaplan lacks clarity. Benavides is pro-ITA, anti-ICE, anti-IHRA, pro-divestment, and a paradigm of honesty and commonsense. If you live in New Jersey, write her in.
Continue readingWell readers, we did it. The Union County Board of County Commissioners voted 9-0 tonight to adopt Resolution 2025-796:
Supporting the Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource Center’s efforts, and encouraging the New Jersey Legislature to pass Senate Bill 3672 and Assembly Bill A4987, which establishes protections for immigrants interacting with government agencies, and designates the “New Jersey Immigrant Trust Act.”
The resolution was co-sponsored by Commissioner Sergio Granados and Chairwoman Lourdes M. Leon, and supported by the entire Board. The Board passed the resolution, offered words of support for migrant rights generally, praised our efforts, and promised to transmit the text of the resolution to the other twenty county governments in New Jersey–two of whom, Essex and Hudson, have already adopted resolutions. Union County makes three, with eighteen more to go.
Continue readingStatement to the Union County Board of County Commissioners
12 Elizabethtown Plaza
Elizabeth, New Jersey
October 23, 2025
Hi, my name is Irfan Khawaja; I live in Princeton. As some of you may remember, I spoke here previously on the matter of the Union County jail. Those of us involved in that effort were pleased to see the Commission conclude this past July that detention-related uses of the jail were “off the table” because they “would not align with Union County’s values.”
Given the troubling reports we’ve seen nationwide about ICE detaining not only individuals with criminal charges, but also everyday people simply trying to build better lives, we cannot support any outcome that risks putting people in jeopardy.
Statement of Hilary Persky to Trenton City Council
319 E. State St.
Trenton, New Jersey
October 21, 2025
Like so many here, I have watched the Trenton Police, during an ICE raid in August, establish a perimeter around ICE agents. We’re told this was to maintain public safety, because ICE had a battering ram, but no warrant, ready to break in–with no warrant. And a police perimeter. Continue reading
To the best of my knowledge, the municipal-level campaign to persuade the New Jersey state legislature to pass the Immigrant Trust Act started last December in Madison, New Jersey, an affluent college town in a relatively conservative part of the state. By March, about a dozen municipalities had followed suit.
Things quieted down in the months after that, but with the impetus of a constant drumbeat of ICE raids, things started up again in June with the campaign for a resolution in Princeton, which eventually passed in August. Whether it’s correlation or causality or both, the movement has heated up since then and gone statewide. About twenty municipalities and two counties have at this point passed pro-ITA resolutions, and plenty of county commissions and town councils across the state are facing demands to pass more. Continue reading
Letter to the Editor of CommunityNews (West Windsor & Plainsboro)
Though I’m not a West Windsor resident, I read with interest your coverage of the upcoming election for mayor and town council, and in particular, the Q&A addressed to the candidates (“West Windsor voters to decide mayor, council contests,” Oct 2).
That said, it seems to me that one important question went unasked. The question is: would the mayor and council be willing to pass a municipal resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act (ITA)? Such resolutions have been passed by some twenty municipalities in the state, including nearby Princeton, and by two counties, including Essex and Hudson. How about West Windsor? Continue reading
Just an FYI to the “No Kings” Democrats: you don’t get to blather to us about “No Kings” while calling for the disarmament of a population under military occupation. The people running these demonstrations seem too historically illiterate to remember that the American Revolution was a war, and that it got rid of the King by killing his troops. Continue reading
I’m pleased to mention that my October 8 post, “La Migra and the Lessons of History,” has been published in both English and Spanish at the Substack of Radio Jornalera NJ, where some of my migrant defense posts will, going forward, be cross-posted. Many thanks to Radio Jornalera’s editor Paulo Almiron for translating the piece into Spanish. I’m also grateful for Radio Jornalera’s posting an earlier piece of mine, on activism and its critics. Continue reading
I first encountered Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice somewhat late in life, as a master’s student in counseling psychology in my mid-forties. The book was published in 1982, but I didn’t read it until the fall of 2014, making me about 32 years late to the party. I’d encountered mentions of the book often enough, but had somehow been given to understand that it was “OK, but overhyped”–old hat by a feminist of the bygone variety: unoriginal, lacking in rigor, and problematically essentialist in its claims about gender. Continue reading
Statement to the Middlesex County Board of Commissioners
75 Bayard St.
New Brunswick, New Jersey
October 16, 2025
Hi. My name is Irfan Khawaja. I live in Princeton, but work in Iselin, and spend most of my waking hours in Middlesex County. I’m here to urge you to join Essex and Hudson counties, plus a couple dozen municipalities, in passing a resolution in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 