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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, flood watch.

A state of emergency has been declared.

Tornado warnings, flash flooding and severe storms expected in all 21 counties.

Plus, travel disruptions.

The heavy rain will cause flight delays and cancellations at Newark Airport, but staffing shortages continue to plague air traffic.

You've got a shortage right now of something close to 3,000 air traffic controllers and it needs funding, but even more importantly, it takes time.

Also, serial negligence.

Over 350 men and women have filed lawsuits alleging they were sexually abused when they were children by the staff at state juvenile facilities.

And there was a person who was in charge.

They were like an authority figure and they sexually abused me.

And homelessness on the rise.

As federal cuts to programs continue, the number of unhoused individuals in New Jersey also continues to grow.

There are a lot of people who fall into a category where their housing is not going to be stable.

And that's really what we're seeing is a flood of people whose living situation becomes untenable or they can't afford the rent.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

♪ ♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

>> Hello and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis.

I'm in for Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with a few of today's top stories.

First, New Jersey is under a state of emergency tonight as intense storms move through the region.

Earlier today, tornado warnings were issued for the central part of the state.

And according to the National Weather Service, flash floods are likely in most parts of the state and all 21 counties face at least some risk of flash flooding tonight.

Now, severe thunderstorms are also bringing damaging winds and intense rain across the state.

Rainfall totals are expected to be around 1 to 3 inches today, but some parts of the state could see 5 to 7 inches of rain.

That might not seem like a lot, but it's more than the typical amount of rain that falls in a whole month.

And similar rainfall totals just two weeks ago led to deadly flooding and widespread damage in parts of central Jersey.

So please, if you don't need to be out, stay home and off the roads.

Now, if you feel like these types of storms are coming more frequently, you're not wrong.

This one is on the back of a series of heat waves that have blanketed the state already this summer.

But a bit of good news, this week's heat dome is expected to move out as the storm subsides, bringing a little bit of relief from those crazy high temperatures.

Also tonight, the controversy over access to ICE detention facilities continues.

A group of Democratic lawmakers from seven different states have filed a lawsuit against ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, charging that they've been unlawfully blocked from oversight visits of ICE detention facilities.

Now, they cite several laws that grant them the right to visit and inspect these facilities without prior approval.

The suit acknowledges the ramped up activity of ICE detentions since the start of President Trump's second term, and they raise concerns about the conditions inside these detention facilities, where 11 people have died since January, and where they say people are being subject to overcrowding, food shortages, a lack of adequate medical care, and unsanitary conditions.

Now, no New Jersey representatives have signed on to the suit, but there is an assault case pending right now against Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, tied to her attempt at an oversight visit at Delaney Hall in Newark.

And a complaint has been filed against a municipal court judge who handles school truancy cases for minors.

The complaint was filed by the state Supreme Court's Advisory Committee for Judicial Conduct.

Britt Simon, a municipal court judge who oversaw cases in Boundbrook, Bridgewater, Somerville, and Raritan Borough, has now been suspended after claims that he made threats to children and their parents, spoke to children in an aggressive and hostile manner, and he failed to have a municipal prosecutor present when addressing the children.

The complaint outlines language allegedly used by Simon, like telling a 16-year-old he's going to be a "beggar piece of garbage" for not going to school, calling kids "disgusting, vile, and contemptuous," asking one minor, "Would you like me to spit in your face?"

and threatening students and their parents with deportation, in one case allegedly saying, "You miss one more day of school.

I'm going to personally have ICE here to pick you up."

The complaint calls the behavior "harassing and injudicious conduct" that created the appearance of bias.

We reached out to Simon's attorney for comment but didn't receive a response in time for this broadcast.

Severe weather is causing delays and cancellations at Newark Airport, but the problems there have been pervasive ever since the Air Traffic Control Center was moved from Long Island to Philadelphia.

The move happened over the course of two administrations, and now the U.S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General is opening an audit to determine what's gone wrong that's led to several blackouts between air traffic control and the pilots coming in and out of Newark.

I'm joined now by Randy Babbitt, a former administrator with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, who knows just how complicated the world of air traffic control really is.

Randy, so great to have you with us tonight.

As you know, the DOT Inspector General is auditing the move of the FAA's air traffic control from Long Island to Philadelphia.

What insight can you offer just about some of the challenges that are inherent with a move like that?

It is complicated.

The people that work in those facilities sometimes are associated with the area where they're moving.

Sometimes they're not.

But I think there is a move.

The facility up in New York is a rather old one, and I think they're trying to either restore it or replace it and perhaps moving some people.

And I think the idea, too, was to put some people into areas where they had shortages.

Yeah, we're going to get into the shortages in a minute, but just in terms of the communication systems, we saw them go dark two times significantly this spring, three times total.

But are these failures the result of the Biden administration bungling the move, as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy alleges?

No, I wouldn't put all the blame there.

There is always one of the things that you do when the FAA makes a request for something, it's got to go through several channels to get approved.

And they blame the FAA.

You didn't do this, you didn't do that, but you can't do it without money.

And so the Secretary of Transportation has to support you.

Ultimately, Congress has to appropriate the money.

What can you tell us about what funding has been put behind those system upgrades now?

We saw Duffy come out in a big way saying that they were going to make these repairs.

We know some have already been made.

What has been done?

What still needs to be done?

You've got a shortage right now of something close to 3,000 air traffic controllers.

And it needs funding, but even more importantly, it takes time.

It's not a short process.

You don't just go out and hire somebody, give them a manual, and six weeks later, they're an air traffic controller.

It's about a two-year process.

And so even if you were full on today, and I am happy to understand that they're seeking alternative avenues to train people, which they need to do.

And the retention rate is not exactly at the top of the board either.

So a lot of people in school are quitting before they finish.

And it's a tough job.

And a lot of people decide after a while they can't do it.

I think it begs the question, for me at least, you know, we saw this plane crash in D.C. where 67 people were killed.

And since then, we've seen video after video of all of these close calls.

And I can't help but wonder how much of this is because the job is that stressful, there are these close calls all the time, or is this because there just simply aren't enough people manning the aircrafts as they come in and out, and we potentially could see more collisions?

Well, I think you have spotlighted, I mean, once you have an accident.

Remember, we went 13 years without an accident.

And that's pretty incredible when you think about it.

If we had the accident rate we had back in the '70s, we'd be losing a dozen airplanes a year.

So we've done a great job of avoiding accidents.

But today we have a lot more air traffic.

There's a lot more aircraft in the air.

And, you know, so you've got a higher volume.

And at the same time, we all acknowledge there's a shortage of air traffic controllers.

We did see Newark Airport slow the rate of traffic in and out of the airport.

Do you think that while this shortage is ongoing across the country, we need to see other airports follow suit?

You may.

I mean, one of the things that doesn't help, and this is not assessing blame, but, you know, a lot of times you'll hear, well, air traffic control.

Well, a lot of these carriers, especially in the big hub and spoke operations, just look at the departure board somewhere, go to an area where one airline prevails, and look at the number of departures, say, at 8 o'clock in the morning.

And you might see 8 or 10 airplanes all departing at 8 o'clock.

That can't happen.

They only have, you know, maybe two runways.

You can't take, you know, that many people.

But yet they schedule that way all the time.

I mean, I've seen pictures of a departure board where 17 airplanes were leaving from one airline in about an 8-minute period.

That's not going to happen.

And then everybody's upset.

Well, you know, air traffic control delayed us.

No, air traffic control didn't delay you.

That's like saying, you know, you've got 17 people want to back out of your driveway at the same time.

It can't happen.

You have to do them one at a time.

That's all the time we have.

Great insight, Randy Babbitt, former FAA administrator.

Appreciate you coming on and offering that perspective.

Well, thank you so much.

This week, hundreds of people have come forward to share harrowing stories of sexual abuse that they say they suffered at the hands of the very people charged for their care.

These allegations come from individuals who were once minors held at juvenile detention centers owned and operated by the state of New Jersey.

They filed lawsuits against the state, charging that it was everyone from case managers to guards who abused them.

Raven Santana spoke to several of the plaintiffs, some of whom are opening up decades after their alleged abuse.

We're here today to announce that more than 350 cases have been filed by men and women who are sexually abused as children in juvenile facilities in New Jersey.

According to attorneys, there are now 350 men and women who have filed lawsuits claiming they were sexually abused as children at New Jersey's juvenile facilities.

Among them is Hassan Kirby, who bravely spoke out during a press conference yesterday.

It started, we're talking about 38 years ago, but I can remember it like it was yesterday when I was called into one of the supervisors' office.

I used to clean and mop and change the garbage cans, and then for him to look at my body, he would tell me stuff like, "Oh, you stole the cigarettes, so you have to strip."

Many of our clients were raped as children in government-operated New Jersey juvenile facilities.

Many of our clients were forced to perform oral sex and other sexual acts.

Our clients were threatened, bribed, coerced, manipulated.

No child should have to go through that.

Last month, the New Jersey Supreme Court approved a multi-county litigation consolidating all of these claims in Middlesex County, home to the New Jersey Training School at Jamesburg, a facility with a long history of federal scrutiny.

According to the legal team, many survivors reported similar patterns of grooming, coercion, and outright sexual assault, all by adult staff employed by the state of New Jersey.

Studies were done specifically about the New Jersey Training School, which used to be called the New Jersey Training School for Boys, located in Monroe Township in New Jersey.

This facility is also called Jamesburg.

This facility was found to have very high incidence of child sexual abuse when studied by the Department of Justice.

So this is something that has been out there, and I think what we're seeing now is just a growing awareness on behalf of sexual abuse survivors who suffered sexual abuse at juvenile detention centers.

Survivors say their speaking out isn't just about accountability.

It's about finally exposing a systematic failure that for decades allowed abuse to persist in silence.

I was just a kid when I was sent to Jamesburg.

Instead of being protected, I was targeted from 2002 to 2003.

While I was housed in the Behavioral Modification Unit, I was abused by a correctional officer named Rodriguez.

At first he pretended to be kind.

He offered me food and extra privileges, and I was grateful.

I thought he was looking out for me, but that was a lie.

One day Rodriguez came into my cell alone, locked the door behind him, and told me it was time.

I paid him back.

I didn't understand what he meant until he slapped me, grabbed me by the throat, and beat me until I submitted.

For others, the trauma was sudden and brutal.

Officer Batista was a very tall and heavy set man.

He wound up hitting me over the head, and I tumbled over.

I'm thinking maybe he just wanted to do physical violence to me, but it was a lot worse than that.

Too graphic to even describe.

It's a shock to me that this place is even still open, or places like it is still open.

The cases span multiple facilities, not just Jamesburg.

Dorothy Lepore, who was 16 at the time, says she was assaulted by a supervisor at Morris Juvenile Center.

And there was a person who was in charge.

They were like an authority figure, and they sexually abused me.

They took advantage of me.

Advocates say this wave of litigation is just the beginning, and they're urging other survivors to come forward.

As of this report, NJ Spotlight News has reached out to New Jersey Training School at Jamesburg for comment, but has yet to hear back from them.

The AG's office released a comment, in part saying, "Given the ongoing litigation, we cannot comment on today's press conference, but our office has made it clear that people who use their positions of power to abuse those under their care will not and cannot be tolerated in this state.

But for advocates, this is not just a legal battle, it's a moral one, about what happens when children placed in custody of the state are abused instead of protected, and how long it takes for truth to surface.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

Every year, the state conducts a point-in-time count, which is really a one-day snapshot of the number of homeless people in our state.

Those numbers help lawmakers and housing support organizations better understand just how vast the issue actually is, and it is vast.

This year, there was an 8% increase in the number of homeless people compared to 2024.

That's about 400 on any given day.

Well, last week, President Trump addressed the issue with an executive order instructing law enforcement to arrest or institutionalize homeless people dealing with substance use or mental health disorders, and to end programs that focus on housing first, calling them a failure.

Rich Uniak is the president of Bridges Outreach that works to connect the unhoused in Essex and Union counties with affordable housing.

He's here now to talk through the numbers and the latest in the federal guidance.

Rich, so great to have you here in the studio with us.

We do see a pretty stark increase in the number of homeless and unsheltered people that came out of the point-in-time count.

Do you understand why we're seeing these stark increases?

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you, Joanna.

Yeah, I mean, it's an affordable housing crisis.

And fewer resources to prevent homelessness.

Rents keep going up.

There was a recent study showing that New Jersey is the seventh least affordable state in the nation.

And to afford a two-bedroom apartment, you have to make $90,000 a year.

There are a lot of people who fall into a category where their housing is not going to be stable.

And that's really what we're seeing, is a flood of people whose living situation becomes untenable or they can't afford the rent.

We've also seen an executive order that just came from the Trump administration that's really pointing to folks who are homeless or unsheltered as a result of mental health issues or substance use challenges.

Unpack that a little bit for us in terms of what you see out on the street and this approach to really criminalize that behavior.

And that's really what it is.

It's criminalization.

It's dehumanization.

It's painting everyone with a broad brush as though it's all mental illness or substance use disorder.

In the seven years I've been with Bridges Outreach, more often than not, I've seen mental illness come about from the trauma of experiencing homelessness, not driving people into homelessness.

The top causes are still in New Jersey and across the country, eviction and being asked to leave a shared residence, breakup of a household.

So when you force people into institutional settings, when you basically criminalize anyone for the experience of homelessness and the biological imperative to sleep, you're really doing everybody a disservice.

And regardless of whether you think that it's inhumane and it's not the right thing to do, I guess one of the bigger problems with it is that it's so incredibly expensive to treat it this way.

I mean, the fair market rate for a two-bedroom apartment in Essex County, where we are right now, is going to come out to just over $25,000 a year.

To institutionalize someone in a prison in New Jersey is $60,000 a year.

For a more specialized institutional setting, it's in excess of $100,000 a year.

So economically, this doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make any sense.

At Greystone, it was $1,000 a day.

So why are we wanting to push people into these institutional settings?

It's not fiscally responsible and it's inhumane.

Let me ask you this, because right before we went on the air, you talked to me about the percentage of increase that you saw that was actually significantly more than the point-in-time numbers showed.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, and that's important, right?

The point-in-time count is an important snapshot, and it's really just that.

It's a point in time.

Our team does street outreach in Newark 24/7, 365.

So we're documenting every encounter.

The point-in-time count showed 107 unsheltered people in Newark.

Through the first six months of the year, we've encountered more than 1,800.

Seventeen times that number.

It's important that we look at the truer measure as we think about what the community needs.

So then, Rich, is it fair criticism for the Trump administration and others to say, then, that these programs aren't working, that they're not solving homelessness?

It's definitely not going to work, right?

We need housing.

We see that it's more cost-effective.

We see all the data show that Housing First makes that sustainability possible.

It makes the substance use treatment, the health care, the behavioral health care all much more possible and feasible.

The success rates spike like a hockey stick.

And we need affordable housing.

That's the bottom line.

We need the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

With just the short amount of time that we have left, do you think that this executive order from the president will lead to more municipalities writing their own laws that allow the jailing, the institutionalization of people who are experiencing homelessness?

I'm afraid that it will, and I believe that their hands are being forced.

There's just too much money at stake, and that's really what I think they're counting on.

Thank you so much for the work that you're doing out there in the community and for highlighting it here with us.

Rich Uniak, president of Bridges Outreach.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Joanna.

In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, people with autism spectrum disorder have staggeringly high unemployment rates, close to 85 percent, according to the nonprofit Spectrum Works.

Well, one lawmaker is proposing a bill to give tax incentives to companies who hire individuals with autism into jobs related to STEM.

That's science, technology, engineering and math.

Ted Goldberg spoke to one young man named Eric who's involved in a job training program that will help him secure his dream job in I.T.

And proponents of the bill say he's a perfect example of why this model is a win-win.

He was so glad to have him in our team.

Bergen Logistics is a busy place with packages zooming around.

It's a great place for I.T.

minds like Eric to learn their trade.

I started off by working in the I.T.

help desk, but then near the end I transitioned to the cloud computing environment.

Eric worked here last summer for about six weeks as part of a pilot program with Spectrum Works, a nonprofit which places neurodiverse people in jobs.

He did such an amazing job showing that he does and others have the skills to do I.T.

positions and any position, but they just need support and opportunities.

With these interns are learning not just that they're welcome in the workplace, but that there's a real legitimate place for them.

They're making contributions.

Eric is studying for his master's degree and is on to a new internship.

What he learned at Bergen Logistics has stayed with him.

I did also learn a few other social skills like how to advocate for myself and how to work effectively as part of the team.

Under a package of bills sponsored by Senator Andrews Wicker, companies would get tax incentives for hiring neurodiverse employees for roles relating to science, technology, engineering and math, which includes I.T.

So if this bill is passed, then I think it will give an I.T.

company an incentive to hire these neurodiverse individuals and then that way they can find successful jobs in the I.T.

industry.

Quite frankly, it's just good common sense because the return on investment is significant.

And so this is a moneymaker.

It's not why you do it, but it is success stories like Eric and others.

Anyone who has the opportunity to make a contribution to our productivity, our revenue stream, our innovation is welcome to work here.

We're really happy to be part of this legislation, which I think could make a really big impact.

One of those bills would allocate more than a million dollars for county colleges that create programs which support neurodiverse students.

It's been amazing.

We've done culinary and computer skills and just watching them succeed is huge.

And the bills that you have in will really grow these programs and really help.

We want to do more, but with less resources.

So with legislation such as this, this will help us further enhance the work that we're doing, especially within our ISTEM program.

Senators Wicker calls this a win-win.

While Eric is still studying, he gets real-world experience in a field he wants to pursue in the future.

My dream job is to become either a data analyst or cybersecurity specialist in a company like Bergen Logistics, where I can put my skills to good use.

We are trying to ensure that we're just going to have many more people just like you, whether it's here at Bergen or at companies around New Jersey, and make sure that you get the dream job that I think is soon in your future.

According to Spectrum Works, the unemployment rate for people with autism is 85 percent, something these bills are trying to address.

In North Bergen, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.

Support for The Business Report is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at halseynwk.com.

That's going to do it for us tonight, but a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen, and you can watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

I'm Joanna Gagas for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us, have a great night, and we'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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