Immigration detainees have a friend in Kearny organization | Faith Matters

Carole King’s “You Have a Friend” could be the theme song of First Friends, a Kearny-based immigration advocacy organization. 

“Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call, and I’ll be there, yes, I will … ”

While the draconian immigration policies of President Trump require more judges, lawyers, social workers and social service agents, most of all, as First Friends is precisely named, immigrant detainees need to have a human contact who cares for them. 

“First Friends offers a friend to the detainee,” Kimberly Krone, 41, the new executive director, said. “I feel like a human being needs to form a relationship to people detained.”

The group’s small paid staff is supplemented by nearly 200 trained volunteers who respond to calls from detainees. A 24/7 hotline is advertised at all jails and prisons where undocumented people are housed. 

Sally Pillay, the program director, described how a typical contact unfolds using the example of Rina, 18, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala recently as an unaccompanied minor. When she turned 18, ICE did not release her from the children detention center into the community or back home; instead she was sent to the Bergen County jail where she called FF asking for someone to visit her.

A First Friends lawyer eventually got her released to the Jersey City refugee Lighthouse, where she stayed for several days until FF could arrange for her to move. It found a residence for her and gave her a cell phone and transportation to the location. 

“We make sure she takes the bus and gets (to her destination) safely,” Pillay said, adding that the group offers compassion and support until a detainee is released.

FF is located a few hundred feet from the entrance to the Hudson County Correctional Center, which holds 600 detainees, and also visits detainees in the Essex county jail and the Elizabeth detention center. 

FF was started in 1997 as a parish ministry at St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Elizabeth to minister to detainees at the Elizabeth center, a converted warehouse where the treatment was quite inhumane, according to released detainees and volunteers. 

Jesuit Father Thomas Sheridan, retired theology department chair of St. Peter’s University and now a resident of Murrary Weigel Hall at Fordham, was one of the volunteers.

“I would get in a soon as possible to hear confessions of those who had asked to do so at Mass on Sunday, and already some would have already been deported,” he recalls.

Lorna Henkel of Secaucus started as a volunteer in 2008 and has been a board member for the last nine years. She said FF depends on donations and grants to meet its $200,000 annual budget. 

They always welcome more volunteers, she said.

Rosa Santana, 33, coordinates the visitation program and has worked for FF since 2012.  She said they get anywhere from 20 to 100 calls a day on their hotline. 

While the national uproar over the separation of children from their parents has brought the immigration in the forefront of the news, it has not really impacted FF because the group has no presence at the Mexican border.

“Sometimes it is overwhelming, though, but God wants us to do his work,” Santana said.

The organization has a database, which enables staffers to track their contacts.  Sometimes they can make a visit the day after a call comes in; other times, detainees may have to wait as much as one week and submit names to the institution in advance.      

The staffers can empathize.

Krone grew up in a mixed racial neighborhood and saw how people of color were profiled. She parlayed that injustice into a law degree from Seton Hall and has done immigrant work since. 

Santana immigrated from Honduras at the age of 14. 

“I feel more connected to them,” she said of the detainees.

The fact that people have no one moves her and she is gratified to work for a group whose mission, she said, is: “I am here for you.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, 07030, FAX: 201-659-5833; Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken.

Details …

First Friends is located at 53 Hackensack Ave, Kearny, NJ 07032. For information, call 908-965-0455or go to https://firstfriendsnjny.org/.