At a recent council session, Hightstown Mayor Larry Quattrone wanted to set the record straight by saying the borough is not a "sanctuary city" for immigrants.
With hundreds of thousands of people flooding into Europe to escape war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa and with the perennial influx of aliens into the United States, the highly charged immigration situation has turned into a divisive hot-button issue all the way down to the local level.
At a recent council session, Hightstown Mayor Larry Quattrone wanted to set the record straight by saying the borough is not a "sanctuary city" for immigrants.
The term sanctuary at first was used to refer to policies and orders to limit cooperation by local law enforcement agencies in helping immigration authorities detain and remove unauthorized aliens. Today, the word has morphed into a catchall political concept implying that supporters of sanctuary are easy on immigrant criminals.
Lest anyone get the wrong impression, Quattrone took pains to point out that a resolution passed by the borough council a decade ago does not offer sanctuary to immigrants with a criminal record. Instead, the resolution was aimed at encouraging aliens who are the victims of crime to feel secure that the local police are on their side and they will not report them to federal immigration agencies.
Hightstown, which is little more than 1 square mile, has a sizable immigration population. Between 2009 and 2013, nearly 13 percent of the borough's residents were foreign born, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The small town has cultivated a welcoming reputation for immigrants, particularly for those without proper documents. In 2005, borough council objected to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents announcing themselves as "police" when they investigated local cases.
That spawned the resolution urging federal authorities to "engage in conduct that does not create needless mistrust and fear of the Hightstown Borough Police Department and other municipal agencies which are committed to help, rather than harm, productive and valuable members of our community."
For that, Hightstown has been branded, at least on some conservative websites, as a sanctuary city.
The backlash against undocumented immigrants has gained traction, particularly after the killing in July of a woman in San Francisco allegedly by an illegal alien who had been deported five times.
A similar situation occurred in Newark in 2007 when an undocumented immigrant from Peru, who was out on bail on two separate criminal charges, was arrested and convicted for his role in the execution of three people in a schoolyard.
If nothing else, the Hightstown situation highlights a regional and national debate on how to deal with immigration. Even a decade ago, Hightstown was right on the mark with its resolution that urged "the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress to continue to pass rational and just immigration laws."
That's good advice for today.