Last year, Mr. Ortiz walked out of the federal correctional facility at Fort Dix, in New Jersey, his sentence reduced after President Obama granted him clemency. He left prison with no money, no relatives who could help him financially, no official identification and no career experience.

But with help from the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, a nonprofit run by James E. McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor, Mr. Ortiz was back in a kitchen five days later, as a chef at The Light Rail Café in Jersey City.

Mr. McGreevey ticked off all the steps needed to get Mr. Ortiz back to work: contact the office of the secretary of state for Puerto Rico to get a copy of Mr. Ortiz’s original birth certificate; put together job applications; scroll employment opportunities; make sure he passed drug tests, and establish a mailing address. All the tasks, Mr. McGreevey noted, are next to impossible for a recently released, long-term inmate, particularly at this moment in time.

“This climate has only exacerbated the tension and the need to have documentation immediately available,” Mr. McGreevey said, adding that he has a list of 70 lawyers statewide who help his organization.