New Jersey State Bar Association headquarters at 1 Constitution Square, New Brunswick, NJ. Credit: Google

Capitol Report

NJSBA President urges swift action to make immigration building more accessible. New Jersey State Bar Association President Jeralyn L. Lawrence penned an urgent plea to the United States General Services Administration (GSA) to reduce the lengthy wait times that force people to stand in the freezing cold by opening up a second entrance to the Peter Rodino Federal Building in Newark. The building houses immigration offices as well as the Social Security office and is where non-detained foreign nationals must go to resolve immigration issues.

"For many years, the lines to enter the Peter Rodino Federal Building have been extremely lengthy, resulting in, at times, as much as a 60-minute wait time before entering," said Lawrence in a letter to the GSA. "However, in the past few months, the line and wait times have gotten worse and are now completely untenable." An NJSBA member attorney witnessed that an hour after people began to line up outside the building, the check-in line remain unchanged and no one had begun to process foreign nationals for their matters.

The NJSBA pointed out that the line denies equal access to justice and poses a risk to the health and safety of these individuals. It urged the GSA to immediately open the second entrance to the building and "employ other reasonable solutions" such as a temporary outdoor structure to shelter people from the cold and elements, like what is done in New York City at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.