At a Spanish-speaking town hall, the Republican candidate for New Jersey governor assured two young Mexican immigrants who were brought to the United States as children that people without criminal records would not face deportation. Three nights later, Jack Ciattarelli headlined a “Make America Great Again”-style event where a far-right commentator joked about building a detention center like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Garden State.
“How about the Boardwalk Brig?” Jack Posobiec said with a laugh as he spoke later that evening at the rally.
Ciattarelli, an unabashed ally of Donald Trump, recently gave the Republican president an “A” grade for his performance in the White House. But as Ciattarelli courts Latino voters in a hard-fought race against Democrat Mikie Sherrill, the former business owner and state legislator has put some distance from Trump on the president’s signature issue of immigration.
Expressing support for issuing driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers to people who are in the U.S. illegally, Ciattarelli has tried to strike a balance between supporters of Trump’s mass deportation strategy and Latino voters that the GOP nominee thinks could be persuaded to support him.
In recent appearances in a Univision forum and in the final debate of the campaign, Ciattarelli promoted not a path to citizenship, as immigration advocates have pushed for years, but what he called a “pathway to recognition,” which he later described as a first step toward citizenship.
It’s a high-stakes gambit in one of two states with governor’s races this year — Virginia is the other — but it’s rooted in Trump’s improved performance among Latino voters last year. In New Jersey, for example, Trump flipped two Hispanic-majority towns where he had lost by more than 30 percentage and 50 percentage points, respectively, in 2016. While the state typically votes Democratic in Senate and presidential election years, and Trump has lost it in all three of his White House runs, it has swung back and forth between parties in odd-year contests for governor.
Ciattarelli’s more lenient stance toward some immigrants emerges amid Trump’s all-out effort to increase deportations, even among those with no criminal record beyond violating immigration laws. Ciattarelli has softened his position in some respects, but he also has made clear that he wants New Jersey law enforcement officers to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
Sherrill, a congresswoman in her fourth term, has hammered Trump throughout the race, casting herself as a bulwark against the administration. But she has not made immigration a campaign emphasis.
