Immigrant Trust Directive
Attorney General Directive 2018-6, known as the “Immigrant Trust Directive,” is designed to strengthen trust between New Jersey’s law enforcement officers and the state’s diverse immigrant communities, thereby ensuring that victims and witnesses feel safe reporting crimes.
The Directive is intended to draw a clearer distinction between state, county, and local law enforcement officers, who are responsible for enforcing state criminal law, and federal immigration authorities, (including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE), who enforce federal civil immigration law. The Directive limits the types of voluntary assistance that New Jersey’s 36,000 law enforcement officers may provide to federal immigration authorities and applies to state and local police officers, correctional officers working in state prisons and county jails, and state and county prosecutors.
The Directive goes into effect in March 2019. Under the new rules, except in limited circumstance:
New Jersey’s police officers:
- Cannot stop, question, arrest, search, or detain any individual based solely on actual or suspected immigration status.
- Cannot ask the immigration status of any individual, unless doing so is necessary to the ongoing investigation of a serious offense and relevant to the offense under investigation.
- Cannot participate in ICE’s civil immigration enforcement operations.
- Cannot provide ICE with access to state or local law enforcement resources, including equipment, office space, databases, or property.
New Jersey’s correctional officers:
- Cannot allow ICE to interview individuals detained on criminal charges, unless the detainee is advised of his or her right to a lawyer and signs a written consent form.
- Cannot continue to hold a detained individual arrested for a minor criminal offense, without certain prior convictions, past the time he or she would otherwise be released from custody simply because ICE has submitted an “immigration detainer” request.
New Jersey’s prosecutors:
- Cannot attack a witness’s credibility at trial based on his or her immigration status.
- Cannot seek pretrial detention of an individual based solely on his or her immigration status.
New Jersey’s law enforcement agencies:
- Must develop procedures to assist victims and witnesses applying for T-Visas and U-Visas, which provide special immigration status for those cooperating with law enforcement investigations.
- Must update current policies to comply with this Directive and train all officers before March 2019.