On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) discussed an immigration facility in Newark and said that “most of the people there, their only crime, if you want to say it’s a crime, is to be in this country without documentation. Many of the people I talked to were already trying to work through the process to get green cards and to get permanent legal status, and it was during that process in which they were pulled off of our streets and out of our neighborhoods.”
Host Jake Tapper asked, “You said that the people in there hadn’t broken the law. They obviously are in this country illegally. My question for you is, are they there waiting for immigration hearings? Are they there waiting to be deported? Like, who are they, exactly?”
Booker answered, “Yeah, so, I want to be clear. There are clearly some people, I talked to one guy, nine years ago, had a DWI charge. That charge, that’s breaking the law. On the whole, most of the people there, their only crime, if you want to say it’s a crime, is to be in this country without documentation. Many of the people I talked to were already trying to work through the process to get green cards and to get permanent legal status, and it was during that process in which they were pulled off of our streets and out of our neighborhoods. So, again, that population that is in there, this is not the higher-security facility that’s in Elizabeth, this is a less secure facility because the people in there do not necessarily pose the kind of threats, the dangerous criminals, the people that Donald Trump said he was going to be focused on. And what we have now is a rapidly escalating situation that this administration, especially with their actions, they’re threatening our airlines and our airports right now, it seems to be intent on escalating and not de-conflicting.”
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