PROSPECT PARK, N.J. (AP) - Another New Jersey community has reaffirmed its status as a sanctuary city for people living in the country illegally.
The declaration was in an executive order that Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah signed at 4:43 p.m. Friday. The timing coincided with the time a week earlier that Republican President Donald Trump signed an executive order that restricts travel from Syria and six other majority-Muslim countries.
Sanctuary cities are locales that don’t cooperate with immigration authorities.
Khairullah was born in Syria and fled while a child, arriving in the United States in 1991. The Democrat said he hopes his action will encourage a dialogue on Trump’s immigration policies and prompt the president to consider the families he may be breaking apart with laws that don’t “reflect on our values in America.”
The executive order signed by Trump would take away federal funds from municipalities that refuse to hand over non-criminal immigrants for deportation. Khairullah said the tiny Passaic County borough, which was founded by Dutch immigrants, receives too little in federal funding for that to be a concern.
“As an immigrant from a country ruled by a dictator, it is important to me that our Commander in Chief upholds the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land,” said Khairullah, who has served as Prospect Park’s mayor for 11 years. “The United States is a land of immigrants and refugees, including our founding fathers. It’s those immigrants and refugees who historically built our country to the respected nation it is today.”
Khairullah’s order came the same day Democratic Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop signed a similar order strengthening policies around that city’s sanctuary status. Another Democrat, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, also vowed last week to protect immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
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