As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the direction of President Donald Trump, gears up for raids targeted toward millions of illegal immigrants nationwide this weekend, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey taxpayer dollars are being used to provide legal defenses for those here unlawfully.

Essex County, NJ granted Rutgers Law School $250,000 in late June to represent detained illegal immigrants, a Rutgers Law news release revealed.

“The residents of New Jersey should be furious about this"

Rutgers, Seton Hall University, and the Legal Services of New Jersey, were all given a one-year grant from the county.

The grant will be used to hire legal officials to manage the cases, according to Rutgers professor Anja Gupta, who also serves as director of the school’s Immigrant Rights Clinic.

[RELATED: UC Berkeley teaches illegal aliens how to ‘fight back’ against ICE]

“This project is another step toward our goal of universal representation for all detained immigrants,” Gupta said in the news release. “The funding will allow us to continue to provide high-quality legal representation to detained immigrants in New Jersey—representation that ensures that immigrants will not be deported without due process.”

Studies indicate that a lawyer’s representation can make it ten times more likely for illegal immigrants to win their case in court, according to the release.

As Campus Reform previously reported, Rutgers received $125,000 earlier in 2019 from Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, who allocated $2.1 million in total to legal representation for residents facing immigration-related legal concerns. Rutgers will be participating in the state pilot program to provide services to detained immigrants who could not otherwise afford legal help.

[RELATED: NYU study advocates providing government benefits to illegal aliens]

Rutgers Law spokeswoman Elizabeth Moore confirmed to Campus Reform that Rutgers Law is participating in both the New Jersey state program and the Essex County grant.

“The residents of New Jersey should be furious about this,” Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told Campus Reform.

“The taxes they pay are being used to create yet another free service for illegal aliens in their state, one which will only serve to attract more foreign nationals and exacerbate the problem,” he continued. “This is the corrosive nature of sanctuary policies. There is no limit to the ways that politicians will steer resources away from legal residents and toward those here illegally.”

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