Everywhere you look, immigration is in the news. It’s at the center of the Trump rise. It’s at the center of the government shutdown. And it’s certainly on the mind of local immigrant activists. Last Thursday, immigration advocates and progressives protested the slow-moving Camden County Freeholders, who had buried requests to publicly embrace both a Fair and Welcoming Resolution and municipal IDs. You can read more about that, complete with video testimonies, over at Blue Jersey. 

But it got me thinking about Camden — where you would expect to see raucous support for such policies. But Phaedra Trethan’s excellent interview of new Camden Mayor Frank Moran showed a much more tepid response. Asked about sanctuary cities (note: I submitted a similar question to Trethan when she requested questions online), here’s what Moran had to say: 

What is your position on municipal IDs and sanctuary city status for Camden?

We’re not going to impose anything that’s contrary to state and federal law at this time. Whatever the attorney general mandates the local police must do, they must do within the law.

One thing I can tell you is that … I speak Spanish. I was born here and my parents are from Puerto Rico. I know that there is an unfortunate dialogue about DACA and undocumented residents in this country. I want to send them a message that, so long as you are a law-abiding resident in the city of Camden, regardless of what your status is, your legal status, you will be treated just like every other resident in this city. …

I’m not going to jeopardize any type of funding that helps me run our government. When I say that, I’m talking about federal CDBG (community development block grants) that are used. With what’s happening right now in DC … I’m hoping that, on a national level, they can become a little more open-minded about undocumented individuals who are well-educated, law-abiding productive citizens of every city in this country. I’ll protect them as well.

It’s telling that Moran’s answer is mostly about how he is constrained about acting as he wants because it might limit his funding. This is the fundamental truth of being a Camden politician — the historical realities of the city (and the forces, including discrimination, that caused these realities) mean that the city is at the whims of those who provide money. That’s mostly the state, but also the Federal government. I said as much in Trethan’s post-mortem of Dana Redd’s administration: 

Stephen Danley, a blogger and assistant professor of public policy at Rutgers-Camden, said the decision led to a less racially diverse police force, though, and one with lower pay and less generous benefits, leading to greater turnover than the city-run department.

Still, he said, faced with crippling fiscal deficits, rising crime rates and political pressure from outside the city, Redd had a fine line to walk.

“Any leader in Camden faces challenges: How do you deal with fiscal deficits in a state where cities are unpopular while still remaining popular with your constituents?” he noted. “It’s an ugly thing (to lay off city workers). And she saw the effects of it (in 2012, the city reached a grim milestone: a record 67 homicides). But no one wanted to live another year with half a police force.”

And later in the article: 

“She’s had to walk a narrow line,” Danley said. “She had to learn what Camden would look like without a lot of state support. And she knew the best way to do that was to partner with the governor. So that meant an influx of money, but also an influx of conservative ideas.

“She made a practical decision, which was to take the money and figure out the rest of it on the fly.”

In other words, in a city like Camden, the politics of the region and country surrounding race, combined with the city’s fiscal deficit, put politicians in a straight jacket. Money comes with strings.