New Jersey lawmakers introduced a bill this week that could bar some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel from ever holding public jobs in the state.
The legislative package includes:
A bill, A4302, that would disqualify ICE agents and officers who served between Sept. 1, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029, from getting a public job in New Jersey in the future. They would be banned from becoming state or local government employees, including law enforcement officers and public school teachers.
A bill, A4300, that would impose a 50% tax on the gross receipts of private detention facilities operating under government contracts. The money would be directed to a new Immigrant Protection Fund.
A bill, A4301, that would make it a criminal offense for anyone — including federal ICE officers — to block state, county or municipal law enforcement from accessing crime scenes or evidence.___
For the same reason rehabilitation is the only sensible reason to even maintain a prison system in the first place: People can change.
This response is just for the “ever” part though. And that framing. I think there are things other than the mentioned thieving, raping and terrorism, perfectly valid as a reason to reject a neighbor, that has no real path toward rehabilitation. I like to think anyone deserves a second chance, no matter the crime, but that only really works with crime as defined today. If someone’s a deplorable asshole, and as such, never actually goes through rehabilitation because it’s not a crime, I think that’s a valid reason to never want them as a neighbor.
So there’s a distinction. Those going through rehabilitation are redeemable in my eyes, always, until proven otherwise by wasting the chances they get.
Those never rehabilitating, i.e doing shit that’s not illegal by today’s standards (or at least never put into the rehabilitation pipeline for it), aren’t.
And I think that is the reason you don’t want them as neighbors. Not that they’ve done crimes, that is redeemable, if you believe in the system. If not, why waste resources with prisons? What’s the point if the thinking is they’ll always just be bad and do hurtful things?
No, you don’t want them because they are fucking shitty people and never suffer the consequences for it, i.e never rehabilitate.