TRENTON, New Jersey — New Jersey has now assigned every dollar of its expanded $20.2 million Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative (DDDI), dividing the money among 10 legal services providers that will represent low-income residents facing immigration detention, deportation and removal proceedings, Governor Mikie Sherrill and Human Services Commissioner Stephen Cha announced on Thursday, November 13.
Source: New Jersey Department of Human Services (state announcement, Nov. 13, 2026)
The announcement completes the funding expansion the Sherrill administration first unveiled in June, when the state raised the program's budget from $8.2 million to $20.2 million — nearly triple the amount available in past fiscal years, and what Commissioner Cha called the largest investment in the program's history. Thursday's step is the allocation itself: the full fiscal-year 2027 amount is now split among named providers, with final award letters sent in the week of November 9.
How the $20.2 million is divided
Current providers receive approximately $13 million: Legal Services of New Jersey, with subgrantees the American Friends Service Committee, Seton Hall University School of Law and Rutgers University School of Law. New experienced removal-defense providers receive approximately $5 million: the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, Church World Service and the NJ Consortium for Immigrant Children. Removal-defense capacity-expansion providers receive approximately $1.2 million: the Immigration and American Citizenship Organization and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Newark. The International Rescue Committee receives approximately $1 million as the program's coordinating entity.
Why the state says it is doing this
"Everyone in this country is entitled to due process and a fair hearing under the law — regardless of where they were born," Governor Sherrill said in the announcement. "With the Trump Administration ramping up ICE activity and creating impossible obstacles for people facing detention and deportation to navigate alone, New Jersey is stepping up to connect residents with qualified legal counsel and equip more attorneys to take on this vital work." Commissioner Cha said access to legal representation "upholds due process and promotes fairer, more efficient immigration proceedings," and credited the governor and the Legislature for recognising the growing need.
Source: New Jersey Department of Human Services (state announcement, Nov. 13, 2026)
The legal gap the program targets is structural. Unlike defendants in criminal cases, people in deportation proceedings generally do not have the right to a government-appointed attorney, so a detained resident without money often faces an immigration judge alone. The state says recent ICE actions and expanded detention and deportation practices have increased the number of people facing prolonged detention without access to bond hearings or other procedural protections — the state's stated rationale, presented here as the administration's position, for expanding state-funded counsel.
Delaney Hall, and how a detained resident gets a lawyer
The state says the $20.2 million will expand legal services for more low-income unrepresented New Jerseyans across the state, including all low-income detainees held at Delaney Hall — the federal immigration detention facility in Newark — who do not already have legal representation. Any New Jersey resident detained by ICE who needs legal support can complete the DDDI referral form on the Department of Human Services website. A separate Legal Representation for Children and Youth Program, run in partnership with Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), handles representation for unaccompanied children, with a referral line at 201-305-9217.
Source: New Jersey Department of Human Services (state announcement, Nov. 13, 2026)
Background: a 2018 program, tripled in 2026
The Detention and Deportation Defense Initiative has operated since 2018, providing free legal representation through state-funded programs. It was established in partnership with Legal Services of New Jersey, the American Friends Service Committee, Rutgers Law School and Seton Hall Law School, and is overseen by the Office of New Americans (ONA) inside the Department of Human Services. Alongside the June funding expansion, the governor also launched the Rapid Legal Response Initiative, led by ONA with trainings by Seton Hall University, to recruit and train volunteer attorneys for emergency immigration defence; the state says more than 150 attorneys have already taken part in that training, focused on habeas corpus petitions, federal litigation and emergency interventions.
Source: New Jersey Department of Human Services, NJ.gov (June 2026 expansion announcement)
Final award letters went out in the week of November 9, pending completion of the appeals and negotiations process. The state cautions that the newly selected providers will need time to hire attorneys and expand staffing before they can deliver services at full capacity, so the full effect of the $20.2 million will build over the coming months rather than arriving at once.
For New Jersey's large immigrant communities — including the Punjabi and wider South Asian communities concentrated in places such as Edison and Jersey City — the practical meaning is a phone number and a referral form instead of a scramble: a detained family member who qualifies on income grounds can now be matched with a funded lawyer, including at Delaney Hall in Newark. Whether the expanded network can keep pace with the volume of ICE detentions in the state will be the test of the program, and Awaaz Punjab will follow the providers' hiring and caseloads as the fiscal-year funding flows.