Since I last wrote on the subject, New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Act (ITA) has been divided into three separate bills, has gotten through a series of committee hearings, and is up for vote in the state legislature on Monday. It’s been sixteen solid months of efforts by a cohort of smart, tough, and dedicated activists. Win or lose, I’m proud to have played a bit part in this effort, and at this point can only urge New Jersey residents to call or text their legislators for the final push (see contact information below). Continue reading
Tag Archives: news
The Immigrant Trust Tour: West Orange Yet Again
I’ve been pleased to see that my blog posts here have generated a bit of press coverage in favor of an Immigrant Trust Act (ITA) resolution in West Orange. This piece, in the November 20 issue of TapInto West Orange, covered my initial statement to West Orange Town Council. This one, in the December 23 issue of The West Orange Dispatch, essentially brings things up to date. Continue reading
The Immigrant Trust Tour: Clifton
I spoke tonight at Clifton City Council in Passaic County, north Jersey. Thanks to Jeff Hoey for the invitation to speak, and to both Jeff and the folks at the Palestinian-American Community Center of Clifton for the camaraderie. There was a rather different atmosphere in Clifton than, say, Princeton, West Windsor, or Cranbury–a circus atmosphere, at times. “Viewpoint diversity,” I think the savants call it.
A couple of members of the public expressed the widely-held view that while their ancestors came here legally, they have no sympathy for those who’ve come illegally. “Illegals,” on this view, deserve whatever anyone, including ICE, dishes out to them, including indefinite detention, deportation, impoverishment, expropriation, family dissolution, and premature death. Continue reading
Character-Based Voting: Mamdani, Cuomo, Sliwa
For years now, I’ve been railing against an argument of Jason Brennan’s concerning character-based voting. Brennan’s argument holds that when it comes to voting, unless a candidate’s character can be shown to be a proxy for the policies he’ll adopt, predictions about those policies should trump judgments about character. In other words, when it comes to voting, the policies you predict that a candidate will adopt are more important than any character-based fact or set of facts about his fitness for office right now. Continue reading
The Immigrant Trust Tour: 9-0 Win in Union County
Well 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 readingThe Trenton Campaign: No Collaboration with ICE
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
The Immigrant Trust Tour: October Update
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
How You Gonna Win if You Ain’t Right Within?
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
Progress, Devolution, Disaster
Notes on Migrant Defense Work in New Jersey
When Resistencia en Acción started its campaign for a municipal resolution in favor of the ITA back in June, we were hoping not only to pass a pro-ITA resolution in Princeton, but to re-ignite what had begun as a statewide movement in favor of such resolutions. At least a dozen municipalities had passed pro-ITA resolutions before Princeton did, and I’m happy to say that a statewide pro-ITA movement has in fact taken off in New Jersey since late summer. Continue reading
Institutional Neutrality: Another Day, Another Exception
Institutional neutrality is the doctrine that institutions like universities should refrain from issuing public comment on matters of public controversy. As I’ve argued here at PoT (and elsewhere), one canonical exception to neutrality is institutional self-defense: a university is obliged to speak up when the university itself comes under attack. Predictably, we now have yet another exception to add to the list: the Charlie Kirk Exception. This exception asserts that when a famous right-wing loudmouth is shot on a university campus, all institutions hitherto bound by solemn pledges of institutional neutrality are obliged to carve out a special dispensation to condemn the act. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 