♪♪ >> Immigration enforcement continues to drive the headlines, including here at home.

We saw news this week that the detention center planned for Roxbury is back on.

After the Trump administration had previously announced it was canceled.

Hi everyone, I'm Joanna Gagas.

This is Reporters Roundtable.

We've got a panel of journalists here with us to help break down all that's happened in the last week of New Jersey news.

Let's meet our panel.

Here with us today we have Dustin Racioppe, editor for Politico NJ.

We've got Pete Kenneth Burns, New Jersey reporter with WHYY, and Sean Sullivan, reporter for NJ Advanced Media.

While ICE continues to dominate the headlines, ICE agents were ordered to halt most traffic stops earlier this week.

That came on the heels of two shootings, one in Maine, one in Texas.

Kenny, I'm going to start with you.

The president didn't seem too happy with that order.

What's changed?

-The poll numbers, quite frankly.

I think they're in a situation that they don't know how to navigate it on.

You have to continue with your promises to the base that you're going to round up as many migrants and immigrants as possible and kick them out of the country.

But at the same time, you have a force that is seemingly untrained or undertrained, and they're making mistakes that a lot of long-time law enforcement officers said that this is not a good deal.

It's not something that you would do as a trained officer.

I think that's the difference, and it's trying to navigate out of a tough situation, and oh by the way, you have elections coming up where your Congress is at risk.

So DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen had said that there that ice would be in the news and in the headlines a lot less under his leadership than it was under Christie Noem, his predecessor.

It's not clear that directly that it was him who gave the order to at least pause or reduce these traffic stops, but the president quickly overrode that Kenny just staying on this.

It seems that there is some division even within the administration now.

Yes?

I'm and I'm not surprised because you're seeing it.

We saw this during the first Trump administration where you have the secretaries and the administrators saying one thing and then the president comes out and says something completely different.

And now you have mixed messages coming from the Trump administration at this juncture.

Okay, Sean, I want to take a look at what's happening in Roxbury.

We heard that the facility that was planned there was going to be halted.

It was no more.

We saw a lot of celebration from Governor Sherrill, advocacy groups, legislators, elected officials here in the state, but then all of a sudden that move was reversed.

What can you tell us about the latest progress there?

Yeah, I think it remains to be seen at this point whether this is sort of like a last gasp effort or a full-on revival of what was a pretty ambitious plan by the Trump administration.

To put Roxbury in context, I think it was like one of 11 properties totaling over a billion dollars that the Trump administration scooped up, trying to build out the infrastructure for this aggressive deportation campaign that President Trump wants to undertake.

But there's been a lot of reporting now showing how much the federal government kind of overpaid in their haste to get these facilities, and there's been a lot of pushback from the communities.

And so the Roxbury looked like it was dead in the water, and then you saw some legal filings saying that they were going to revive it.

I've been doing this long enough to know that sometimes the left hand just doesn't know what the right hand is doing in government.

And so it could be as simple as that.

But Mark Wayne Mullen then doubled down on social media responding to the governor basically saying DHS is never going to back down, which was a reversal.

It did seem for a while that Mark Wayne Mullen was treating these detention centers as the legacy of Kristi Noem and that, you know, okay, well that was her mistake.

I'm not, so I don't, I don't have to own that.

So we're just going to move on.

This seems like a little bit of reversal, of course, and we're not sure whether that's for procedural reasons or if they're doubling down.

Yeah, and he had promised that he would look into it when he was going through his hearings to be confirmed, his confirmation hearings.

Dustin, it's hard to take the politics out of all of this, but I have seen some pundits kind of surmising that maybe this is being used as a political football, that the president is actually setting up, perhaps putting Roxbury back in play, maybe setting up Congressman Tom Kane Jr.

to have something in hand, a pawn in hand perhaps on the campaign trail.

Is there any evidence that that is what's happening here?

Let's start there.

No evidence that I've seen or am aware of.

I suppose it's possible Tom Kane Jr.

probably needs some sort of help considering his district is so closely contested and so intensely watched coming up in the midterms so I guess anything is possible it's also kind of hard to see that somebody is putting so much calculation into trying to play some sort of chess that this Roxbury thing is going to help Tom Kane in a few months.

It's a little bit hard to see, but I suppose it's possible.

Hard to imagine maybe, but we do live in a world where there was bipartisan agreement on an immigration bill in Congress that would have made some real reforms and that was taken off the table because there was an election coming up.

With that in mind, let me just ask you this.

Is there any benefit, does the Congressman perhaps benefit from having this as something he can step in and stop?

Or is there any benefit to him in this coming back on the table right now?

And by the way, it's wildly unpopular among Republicans in that town.

Yeah, as like the conventional wisdom at this point has been that it's bad for Tom Kane because it's unpopular across the board.

The Republican Town Council there is all, they're all against it.

So it doesn't benefit anybody at this point that we can see, of course there's this scenario where, you know, Tom Kane Jr comes in and he's the, he's the savior and he can go on and campaign and say I helped kill this, this plan.

But yeah, I mean, it's, it's really just very difficult to see that, that being the case.

I think probably the most likely scenario is that they go back into court and it just gets tied up for the next several months.

Costs everybody time and money.

Of course, staying on that congressional race in District 7, Congressman Tom Kane Jr.

is fighting against Rebecca Bennett, who's a former Navy helicopter pilot.

She's a mom.

Kenny, this week she got the endorsement of former Governor Phil Murphy.

Does that help her?

Does that hurt her?

Is he relevant in New Jersey anymore?

We'll see.

I've yet to, in the almost decade that I've lived in this state, I have not seen like a former governor beloved in New Jersey yet, except for maybe Tom Kane Sr.

But endorsements, we'll see, especially in this one, where you have a district that is, I would describe it as purple more than anything, as well as whether or not Governor Murphy has that type of endorsement power.

But as far as Murphy boosts to get her over the finish line, in District 7, I'm not too sure.

Yeah, well, as we watch this race play out, of course, money plays into it.

Dustin, I actually want to come back to you because Congressman Kaine has been a prolific fundraiser throughout his time in Congress, but he's been away for nearly four months and that absence has definitely hampered his ability to raise money.

However, strong quarter two, when he came back, he raised a little more than $519,000, $100,000.

But Rebecca Bennett raised $1.6 million in that same time.

Does he make up for lost time?

Because this race is so important to Republicans.

And we should point out he has a war chest that's three times hers already.

But how do you see his return impacting his fundraising ability?

I think it's going to be beneficial to him that he's back.

He is technically campaigning.

We don't know.

We haven't seen him actual campaign.

But really what matters in the summer months and when there's a lull is how you're doing in fundraising and fundraisers and getting on the phone and trying to bring in all those dollars.

He's always been a very strong fundraiser I don't see that changing at all.

One of the disadvantages for Bennett, despite her strong fundraising was that she had to spend a lot of money, fighting off a number of challengers for the primary, whereas Tom Kane didn't have that scenario it was, it was all his own.

So I think that the next couple of months will be pretty crucial.

There's no indication that Tom Kane will slow down in terms of being a strong fundraiser.

So this is obviously a race that is on the map nationally.

All eyes are on this district as one that potentially could flip from red to blue.

It is a district that heavily favors Republicans with the redistricting a few years ago.

But Dustin, how much national money do you think is gonna pour into this race?

And does it all kind of even out in the end in terms of their fundraising ability?

How do you see it?

- Yeah, well, I think that the outside spending is gonna be a very big factor.

There's one group we reported this week, an independent group that's been sort of quietly spending millions of dollars attacking Kaine.

And that's kind of unusual, but it also is probably an indicator that as we get closer to the campaign, the election, you know, post-Labor Day, we're going to see those efforts really ramp up on both sides.

But it's clear at this point that the outside groups supporting Bennett are very energized and optimistic about her chances in November.

Yeah, we can definitely expect some attack ads from probably all sides when it comes to this.

And of course, dark money in politics is something we There's not always accounting for who's spending the money on the ads.

Sean, let's switch gears quite a bit because we have an exciting weekend here in New Jersey.

The World Cup final match played right here in East Rutherford on July 19th.

I'm not going to ask you to pick a winner, but I am going to ask if you can guess what kind of turnout we can expect just based on the numbers that we've seen already.

Fan turnout, international folks coming into New Jersey.

I think you're going to see a pretty packed, pretty good enough turnout.

I think this tournament overall early on was plagued by a lot of logistical issues.

A lot of the promises of occupancy, hotel occupancy and the like haven't come to play.

This is the World Cup final and we are still talking about one of the largest international sporting events.

And so I for one will not be driving anywhere near the stadium this weekend.

And I expect things to get pretty crazy.

Will it be a transit nightmare or anything like that?

I mean they've actually done a fairly good job.

We've had our hiccups and stuff like that, but the dire messaging we were getting at the early outset, you know, the concerns of Europeans clogging the turnpike as they walk, haven't come to play.

And so, you know, we might actually have, you know, New Jersey might actually come off looking good this weekend.

But, you know, maybe I'll just knock on some wood right now.

Yeah, knock on wood.

I'll tell you what, we haven't seen any of the things we were concerned about to pick up on your point.

NJ Transit crashing, trains getting stuck.

I mean, really, it's been pretty quiet.

And also, I've been watching to see if there's a lot of pushback and feedback from folks whose normal commute got disrupted because of this.

And that's been pretty quiet, too.

It actually seems like things are running relatively smoothly when it comes to NJ Transit.

One of the things we have to dissect and we'll be able to look at probably after the games is how much the state spent versus recouped on the rerouting of all the trains.

I'm curious, just based on what we've seen, is there any way to measure the economic impact of this, whether it be negative from NJ Transit or positive from all of the tourists coming in, the fanfests, the flag cities events, of course the team staying at the MC Hotel, more on that in a minute.

Yeah, this is always a squishy question coming into the World Cup or any sporting event, the Olympics, the Super Bowl.

The projections you were getting from the host committee was $3.3 billion.

It's important to note that our friends at NorthJersey.com have done some great reporting about these numbers.

And when you drill down on the details, very often the details are not forthcoming.

And I've talked to a lot of economists over the years about the economic impacts of these sporting events.

And every mainstream economist who isn't being paid by a host committee or a sporting team will tell you that these things tend to be a little bit more extractive than they are advertised.

I mean, the question is not just... I mean, certainly money has been spent in New Jersey.

There's no question about it.

The question is, who collected the money that was being spent and where are they going to spend it?

Because, you know, it looks like FIFA's taking a lot of that money and going home.

Yeah, and FIFA has no problem charging, in some cases, a million dollars a ticket.

We're hearing thousands, hundreds of thousands for tickets, especially for this final match.

They're selling off the grass now.

Kenny, go ahead, say it again.

I was just saying they're selling off the grass now.

We're seeing reporting that there's headlines now that the World Cup sod is being sold off.

I know that Dusty's colleague Matt Friedman had a little piece today trying to puzzle out whether the taxpayer was getting fleeced.

And I think he concluded it's kind of a wash.

But that's that's good.

That is about as good as you get in terms of solid answers when you press on a lot of the money questions around the World Cup.

Yeah, yeah, and people will buy it.

That's the thing.

If you sell it, they will come.

Kenny, I want to look at some of the teams and some of the excitement that we've seen.

What's been your kind of highlight moment or pivotal moment this week that you've seen in the World Cup?

I just want to say I'm going to miss the World Cup based on the fans that have come to the US alone.

They have been entertaining.

But I'm wondering now that England was knocked out by Argentina.

What are the Norway fans saying?

Because when England knocked out Norway, the English fans said had a nice little jaunty anthem on the spot saying there was going to be no rowing in New York.

Although someone should tell them it's actually New Jersey, but that's neither here nor there.

So my question is, Norway fans, what is your comeback chant?

Because England has gone home and the BBC, I just looked at their website, said that this is probably one of the worst losses that England has suffered in 60 years of World Cup.

So do you expect Norway fans are cheering on Argentina in this final match against Spain?

I think they're cheering Argentina for the fact that they kicked England out.

That's it.

That's it.

You cheer for the team that beat your team.

I learned that from my dad as a kid.

Important lesson when it comes to sports.

Kenny, let's stay on this because we touched on NJ Transit.

We've seen millions invested for these matches.

Do you think that the average person cares about some of these things that we talk about?

About how much NJ Transit spent?

About how much perhaps the state loses in the investment here?

Does this matter?

Ironically, you mentioned NJ Transit because I think the average New Jerseyan will think they spent all this money to make the train work to go between Penn Station and East Rutherford, but they can't make it work anywhere else.

But as far as the other stuff, I'm sure they're concerned to the point of how much money was spent and that money could have gone to schools or other public infrastructure.

But to an earlier point, if New Jersey had some state university that will unpack all that was spent on roll cup, the money that was spent on tickets and souvenirs and food and lodging.

And then we get a fuller picture in about a couple of years, depending on how fast the information comes.

All that to say, it's going to be a little bit before we really see the final impact of all of this.

So we can really contextualize and really give a WGAS understanding about how this helped or hurt New Jersey at the end of the day.

And here I thought you were about to break some news on the air that there was a university launching a study.

So keep us posted when you do hear that someone takes that.

I'm sure it'll hit our inboxes at some point into the future.

I'm sure it will.

Dustin, switching gears.

We got a new report looking at the state health benefits plan.

We knew it wasn't going to be good.

It might be even worse than we thought.

What's the latest in terms of these premium increases that we might see in the coming year?

The latest recommendations are upwards of 30% premium rate increases for the state run employment plan.

This was a good segue because as Kenny was speaking, I was kind of thinking, yeah, there should be a study and there should be maybe some concern about the benefits versus the financial spending of the World Cup.

But actually what people maybe don't know or care so much about, which is just as important, if not more important, is these health costs at the local level.

You're seeing school boards fleeing state run plans.

The state employees are facing these double digit price increases.

It all trickles down and it has implications for tax bills.

Whereas something like the World Cup just doesn't quite as directly impact people but the World Cup is magnitudes of order, much more visible in the public consciousness.

I can't help but point out Dustin when we reach out to journalists even folks who cover healthcare we hear a lot well this is really complicated this one's this one's hard to explain this one's hard to kind of get a handle on, even for pundits even for for journalists and yet I haven't heard much in terms of the governor's office taking this on or talking about this being their next priority.

Do they have any choice but to make this a major priority in the next year or does this become a crisis that falls in the governor's lap?

This has been a crisis that's fallen into Governor Sherrill's lap.

Phil Murphy tried to broker an agreement before he left.

But it is complex.

We're in a what analysts have called a death spiral.

So yeah, you know, it's inevitably going to fall on some measure to the state.

How much the state may have to pay is TBD.

It's already taken out loans or offered loans, I should say, to some of these entities that need it.

And in the meantime, the Sherrill administration is is going to have no choice but to try to come up with more of a long term solution, because it's just, it's just going to get worse from there.

OK, Sean, we've all been sitting under a blanket of heat this week, and now that blanket turned gray because we are sitting in smoke and smog.

What can you tell us about these wildfires in Canada and Minnesota that are impacting our air, our ability to even go outside right now?

And by the way, the way my voice sounds right now.

Yeah, it's been it's been smoky the past few days.

Hopefully this weekend, as folks are watching this, things have cleared up because the, you know, the forecasts were that conditions were going to improve, but, you know, things did get so bad that, you know, my colleagues at NJ.com, where we are famous for our subtlety, created a misery index, which combines temperature, humidity, heat index, sorry, a misery meter, which combines temperature, humidity, heat index, and air quality.

And, you know, things were getting in the red the past few days, but have improved as of the time that we're taping this.

I mean, this is something that, you know, has become sort of an annual occurrence here.

You know, I think that people, it causes a lot of anxiety, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it obviously evokes concerns about climate change, and it also evokes a lot of immediate concerns.

And I think that it's been a difficult few days, but maybe things are gonna clear into the weekend.

Yeah, we can't go outside, can't get our exercise outside.

We weren't able to eat produce, although it looks like we should be able to again, just stay away from, it looks like Taylor Farms might be the one that contributed to that outbreak.

But let me switch gears again, Kenny, you wrote recently about Rutgers.

A couple different stories here.

Let's start with the dean being investigated.

We don't have a lot of time, so give us a quick synopsis of this ethics complaint.

So in New Jersey, if you're a state employee, your company or a partially owned company that you have in your portfolio can't do business with the state.

And that's where this ethics complaint is the root of.

Since Jacqueline Maddox was the dean of the School of Arts in Newark, been dean since July 2020, she has made thousands of dollars off her company owned in Newark called Easton's Nook.

And there's a complaint underway to investigate.

The university didn't say much.

They said that they're investigating it.

They take the complaint seriously and that they have suspended any business with this company.

- Okay, there's another Rutgers story.

International students still coming in in spite of national policy or Trump administration policy.

What are we seeing there?

- Yes, so this was interesting.

The question I had when I first came back from parental leave, by the way, how has the immigration policies affected international students?

So I actually called several public schools or schools around the region, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware.

And these schools that we selected in my story, they have the most dealing with international students, Rutgers, Temple.

Rutgers has had a positive trajectory over the last couple of years.

And Temple in Philadelphia has been pretty much even killed for the most part because they started a campaign a decade ago that really targeted, I shouldn't say targeted, but really tried to recruit international students to study in Philly.

And then of course Temple has a couple of overseas campuses as well.

All right, really quickly, just a few seconds, Dustin, we know she's a Navy helicopter pilot, but the governor is using a helicopter to get to work.

Some folks not too happy about it.

What can you tell us about the cost there and how many times she's used a helicopter?

Yeah, we got some records that show just over a roughly three-month period she used a helicopter eight times, but one of those trips was down to the Naval Academy for a some sort of alumni college gathering.

You know, these helicopter trips, they're a perk of the job.

Other governors have used the helicopter.

Other governors have got in trouble for how they use the helicopter.

But they're pricey though, yes.

Up to $2,500, you know, for these trips.

So yeah, there's a taxpayer expense to it.

There's a gray area in terms of the justification for it.

The Sherrill administration isn't too thrilled that we pointed this out, but you know every governor has done this.

Every governor has been dinged or had coverage of it.

That's just the way it goes, especially when you... We got to leave it there, but Dustin, Kenny, Sean, thank you all.

Great conversation today.

Thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

You can follow me on Instagram @joannagaggisnj and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

On behalf of all the crew working behind the scenes to put this show together, I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Have a great weekend.

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