Old Bridge GOP leader defends ICE, calls Nazi comparisons ‘despicable’

☑️An Old Bridge Township council leader defended ICE at a meeting

☑️Dr. Anita Greenberg-Belli called comparisons to Nazis offensive and inaccurate

☑️Greenberg-Belli says NJ's Immigrant Trust Directive arguing makes towns less safe

OLD BRIDGE — One of the few New Jersey politicians to speak positively about ICE's presence in New Jersey is a Township Council member who extoled the agency from the dais this week.

Township Council Vice President Anita Greenberg-Belli urged people to stop comparing ICE to Nazis. The Republican talked about the positive difference that ICE agents have made during the current immigration crackdown.

"All the drugs that were pouring into this country, killing a hundred thousand people a year, that's unbelievable. How about all the trafficking of children and human trafficking?" Greenberg-Belli said. "We have to recognize that ICE is not the problem," adding that there is a "difference between protest and disruption."

She called those who compare ICE agents to Nazis ignorant and despicable. Unlike Jews taken from their homes in Germany during the Holocaust, Greenberg-Belli said those who come to the U.S. illegally have a home country to return to.

"Jewish people, they weren't allowed even to leave the country. (Nazis) took their businesses, they took their homes and then they slaughtered them.  It has no comparison with the Holocaust and when you use that word and call these people Nazis and fascists, it just shows your ignorance, so please stop," Greenberg-Belli said.

ALSO READ: Hudson County blocks ICE agents from county facilities

Immigrant Trust Directive under fire

Greenberg-Belli also took on the state's Immigrant Trust Directive, which limits New Jersey law enforcement from assisting ICE. Local police, ICE agents and the family of the would be safer if they were able to work together. She compared it to branches of the military not being able to work together.

"It's the most insane thing," Greenberg-Belli said.

Greenberg-Belli co-authored a resolution authorizing a lawsuit against the Murphy administration after the directive was implemented by then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal in 2019.

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