Several of New Jersey’s congressional representatives hosted a Town Hall Saturday, taking questions about the presence of Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents in communities around New Jersey.

“No one should be above the law to do whatever they want to do without any accountability,” Rep. LaMonica McIver said.

McIver, Rep. Rob Menendez, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman and local elected officials in Essex County joined Analilia Mejia, a candidate to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill as the representative for New Jersey’s 11th District.

The special election took place on Thursday, but it was still too close to call as of Saturday night.

“We have the expectation of due process and equal protection, a day in court before we are judged. What we are seeing is the public execution of American citizens,” Mejia said. “So, it is our responsibility to understand our rights, to inform our neighbors, and to uphold them.”

Officials also referenced several pieces of legislation at the state level meant to regulate ICE, two of which were vetoed by former Gov. Phil Murphy.

One of the vetoed bills would have codified an existing directive that limits local law enforcement’s ability to assist ICE in New Jersey.

“We need to eliminate ICE as it exists, but we need to eliminate the Department of Homeland Security as it exists,” Watson Coleman said.

The hosts of Saturday’s Town Hall told News 12 they’d like to see the vetoed bills make their way back to the governor’s desk.

Lawmakers also spoke on several of the latest hot-button issues surrounding ICE presence in the Garden State.

“They should be following the constitution, not a memo from DHS. They are wrong in every which way they talk about it, and their rhetoric from the White House is dangerous for all of us,” Menendez said in response to a question about an ICE operation in Jersey City last weekend where an agent stated he didn’t need a warrant to make an arrest.

Elected officials also addressed conditions inside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center in Newark.

McIver was hit with federal assault charges while attempting to do an oversight visit at Delaney Hall last year.

“We spoke to over 40 detainees who told us the conditions there. They do not get food regularly, the cleanliness of the location. They do not have access to medical care,” she said. “No matter what side you’re on, no matter what policy you agree with, the things that you see that are happening, ask yourself: is that right?”

Welcome to this week’s mailbag. There was a genuinely stunning—and mostly overlooked—election result last week. And no, I’m not talking about the special election in Texas. Fortunately, several Message Box subscribers asked about it, so let’s dig in.

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What can the NJ-11 result tell us about the weakness of the Democratic establishment? It seems like progressive candidates are doing well even in purple-ish areas

I want to start by saying this plainly: the New Jersey special Democratic primary to replace Mikie Sherrill is going to send shockwaves through the Democratic establishment. This is the most consequential Democratic primary result since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in 2018.

Seriously.

NEW YORK — A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore funding to a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey on Friday, ruling just as construction was set to shut down on the massive infrastructure project.

The decision came months after the Trump administration announced it was halting $16 billion in support for the project, citing the then-government shutdown and what a top federal budget official said were concerns about unconstitutional spending around diversity, equity and inclusion principles.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas in Manhattan approved a request by New York and New Jersey for a temporary restraining order barring the administration from withholding the funds, while the states seek a preliminary injunction that would keep the money flowing while their lawsuit plays out in court.

“The Court is also persuaded that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiffs have adequately shown that the public interest would be harmed by a delay in a critical infrastructure project.”

The White House and U.S. Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday night.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the ruling “a critical victory for workers and commuters in New York and New Jersey.”

“I am grateful the court acted quickly to block this senseless funding freeze, which threatened to derail a project our entire region depends on,” James said in a statement. “The Hudson Tunnel Project is one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, and we will keep fighting to ensure construction can continue without unnecessary federal interference.”

The panel overseeing the project, the Gateway Development Commission, had said work would stop late Friday afternoon because of the federal funding freeze, resulting in the immediate loss of about 1,000 jobs as well as thousands of additional jobs in the future.

The new tunnel is meant to ease strain on an existing, over 110-year-old tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey for Amtrak and commuter trains, where delays can lead to backups up and down the East Coast.

New York and New Jersey sued over the funding pause this week, as did the Gateway Development Commission, moving to restore the Trump administration’s support.

The suspension was seen as way for the Trump administration to put pressure on Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, whom the White House was blaming for a government shutdown last year. The shutdown was resolved a few weeks later.

At a hearing in the states’ lawsuit earlier Friday in Manhattan, Shankar Duraiswamy, of the New Jersey attorney general’s office, told the judge that the states need “urgent relief” because of the harm and costs that will occur if the project is stopped.

“There is literally a massive hole in the earth in North Bergen,” he said, referring to the New Jersey city and claiming that abandoning the sites, even temporarily, “would pose a substantial safety and public health threat.”

Duraiswamy said the problem with shutting down now is that even a short stoppage would cause longer delays because workers will be laid off and go off to other jobs and it’ll be hard to quickly remobilize if funding becomes available. And, he added, “any long-term suspension of funding could torpedo the project.”

Tara Schwartz, an assistant U.S. attorney arguing for the government, disagreed with the “parade of horribles” described by attorneys for the states.

She noted that the states had not even made clear how long the sites could be maintained by the Gateway Development Commission. So the judge asked Duraiswamy, and he said they could maintain the sites for a few weeks and possibly a few months, but that the states would continue to suffer irreparable harm because trains would continue to run late because they rely on an outdated tunnel.

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Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.