Newark Mayor to Seek ID Cards for Undocumented

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is developing a plan to provide municipal identification cards to undocumented workers, in a bid to get them out of the shadows, officials said.

The mayor first disclosed the plan on Wednesday evening at a Town Hall style event in the city’s East Ward, which has one of the largest Portugese communities in the country.

The card program would follow a similar program created by New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, where hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants from Latin America, Asia and other communities work and live in a largely underground economy. Officials said a municipal ID card would help these undocumented workers feel more comfortable in coming forward to cooperate with law enforcement, report abusive housing conditions and publicly discloses other issues.

“He doesn’t want people to feel that if they do certain things they will be deported,” said Felipe Luciano, the acting communications director for Baraka.

Officials did not have any immediate figures on how many undocumented immigrants are in the city of Newark, but reports have the mayor hoping to implement such an ID program by 2016.

Advocates for immigrant communities say the plan will help provide greater protections for these groups.

“What we’ve seen from around the country is that municipal ID programs can be a ticket for immigrant communities for greater equality, less discrimination and a fuller civic life,” said Ari Rosmarin, public policy director at the ACLU of New Jersey.

He estimated that before President Obama’s executive order on undocumented workers was issued, there were about 500,000 undocumented immigrants in New Jersey.

The Princeton-based Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund previously helped put together a prior community ID program for undocumented immigrants in Mercer County, which includes the state capitol of Trenton.