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Tonight on NJ Spotlight News, rising rates with the cost of power soaring at record temps on the way.

State regulators and utilities hatch a plan to offer short-term relief for electric customers.

Plus, ICE scrutinized.

As a federal immigration crackdown sweeps the nation, ICE's problematic past treatment of detainees resurfaces.

Medical procedures like hysterectomies were performed on women who did not need them, and there was no medical reason for that.

Also, deportation block to federal judge rejects ICE efforts to remove a New Jersey resident who's been legally protected for more than 15 years.

It's not just quote unquote undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants that they're going after, right?

This is someone who, again, won his case 16 years ago.

He's had a work permit ever since.

And federal funding cuts.

Republicans in Congress target money for Planned Parenthood, threatening abortion access here in the state.

About 30 percent of the patients that come to Planned Parenthood health centers in New Jersey use Medicaid as their insurance.

So you're effectively cutting off those patients from their health care provider.

NJ Spotlight News begins right now.

From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Thursday night.

I'm Brianna Vanozzi.

We begin with breaking news, a hero's welcome for Edan Alexander.

Crowds lined the streets of downtown Tenafly this afternoon, waving American and Israeli flags, cheering and crying in an overwhelming show of support for Idan Alexander and his family, who arrived back in their Bergen County hometown today in a motorcade of police vehicles.

Idan could be seen through a rolled down car window, smiling and waving at the crowd.

He spent 600 days in Hamas captivity after being taken hostage during the October 7th attack on Israel and was the last known living American hostage to be released.

Massive crowds gathered in Tenafly on May 12th, just last month, to watch as Idan was finally reunited with his family in an emotional and highly anticipated event that many in the community said they could only pray would happen.

Also tonight, just in time for the heat wave, the state's largest utility companies have a plan to cut the cost of your electric bills.

On Wednesday, the Board of Public Utilities approved a plan to defer a total of 60 bucks from bills for July and August.

But as with most things, there is a catch.

Customers will have to pay that money back in $10 installments between September and February when energy use is typically lower.

The plan includes customers who use PSE&G, AC Electric, Jersey Central Power and Light, and Rockland Energy.

The companies also pledged to extend separate bill credits for low-income customers, waive reconnection fees, and extend shutoff protections that are normally only used during the winter to instead July, August, and September.

It comes as the state is dealing with soaring energy prices that are causing the average electric bill to spike about 20%.

Governor Murphy also announced a plan that will offer most ratepayers about $100 in relief money, but the details still aren't yet worked out.

And charges have been dropped for 13 Princeton University students who were arrested during last spring's pro-Palestinian campus protests.

A municipal court judge this week dismissed trespassing charges filed against the students.

In exchange, they'll have to complete at least six hours of community service and submit an apology letter.

The group, which included five undergrads, six graduate students, a postdoctoral researcher, and a seminary student, was arrested in April 2024 during a sit-in at Cleo Hall.

It was an attempt to pressure university leadership to divest from companies connected to Israel's military campaigns.

While the students' lawyer has maintained they were just exercising their constitutional right and didn't violate the law, in their apology letter, the group acknowledged causing unintended emotional harm to staff and said they regretted causing any anxiety and stress in their protest against the war in Gaza.

The charges were dismissed with prejudice, meaning the case can't be retried and the students' records will be expunged.

Well, in the budget request to Congress, the Trump administration asked for a massive funding increase to expand immigration enforcement.

A big portion of that is to add capacity at ICE detention centers by about 100,000 beds.

But throughout its history, ICE facilities have been plagued by documented problems, including poor conditions and even human rights abuses.

NJ Spotlight News looked through years of inspection reports conducted at the centers in New Jersey and around the country and found both disturbing and alarming practices that appear to be widespread.

Our Washington, D.C. correspondent Ben Hulak joins me now with more details.

Ben, thanks for joining me.

In light of all the renewed energy, attention, money that's looking to be thrown to ICE, you looked at some of the problems that have occurred there in the past.

Can you give us a sense of what you found?

Yeah, I spent a little bit of time this week looking at old IG reports, Inspector General reports, that the parent agency of ICE, Homeland Security, has conducted over the years over Democratic, Republican administrations.

And it really runs the gamut from pretty revolting information about how food is stored.

Bloody chicken was discovered at an ICE holding facility in Essex County back in 2018.

Moldy bread, really revolting food.

And then also medical procedures like hysterectomies were performed on women who did not need them, and there was no medical reason for that.

And then both in the Biden and Trump administrations, ICE has a record of losing tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors.

These are the children of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

So that's really a lot of the backdrop.

And then more recently, folks detained in ICE facilities have had a hard time or really an impossible time getting a hold of outside legal counsel or their family members because they haven't been allowed PIN numbers to use phones inside a lot of these facilities.

So it's a deep and checkered, troubling past that ICE has across the years.

Are the findings of these inspector general reports widely known, at least among members of Congress, because there's support for expanding not just the operations but the funding there?

Are members at all concerned about some of the troubled past?

It really splits down the party line.

This is a tough crackdown on immigration is really the hallmark of this Trump presidency.

In a way, it even wasn't in the first Trump presidency.

Much of that term was about building the border wall with Mexico.

ICE has taken front and center stage in this term.

So Democrats absolutely are appalled, horrified, and worried about these findings.

There also is a new wave of Democrats, including Lamonica McIver from New Jersey, who represents Newark, who were not here in the first Trump administration.

So a lot of members, newer members, are finding out sort of as the public is finding out how these ICE centers work.

But it's clearly down the party lines.

And does it look at this point as though what the administration has requested in terms of funding, in terms of personnel, that that will happen?

I don't know.

But it's a really valid question.

There's a standard appropriations process, and ICE gets money through that, of course.

On top of that, ICE has requested $45 billion for this massive buildout of ICE facilities.

So Delaney Hall is about 1,000 beds.

That's the capacity.

The administration wants 100,000 beds.

So we're talking 100 Delaney Hall-sized ICE facilities.

Whether Congress says, yes, we'll foot the bill for that, that's up in the air.

But this is a huge sticking point on the Hill, and Democrats are not pleased.

But, of course, they're in the minority, so the leverage they have is minimal.

The rest of the Capitol there shut down for Juneteenth, but Ben Hulak for us on the Hill.

You can read Ben's story on this and all of his reporting on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Ben, thanks.

Thank you.

Meanwhile, a New Jersey resident just secured what his lawyers believe is one of the first successful legal reversals in a deportation case under the Trump administration.

According to lawyers, Egyptian native Karim Tadros was arrested at his home on May 7th without warning.

That's despite a court order protecting him from removal.

After several intense weeks in ICE custody, he unexpectedly secured his freedom.

Ted Goldberg has the story.

They call me at 5 o'clock in the morning.

The officer said, "You have court right now."

I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"

He said, "No, since you're here, it's today.

You have court in a half hour."

Now I'm not nervous.

I'm like, "Shit bricks."

After spending six weeks of ICE detention in Elizabeth, Karim Tadros was ordered to court a day earlier than expected, and then unexpectedly freed by a district court judge on Monday.

And then I see my family inside.

I see my brother and my mom in the courtroom with my lawyer.

And then I felt a strange sense of calmness.

Like, this is the day I'm going to get released.

Tadros was born in Egypt but came over to New Jersey as a young child when his parents were granted asylum.

He received a drug conviction in 2006 and was nearly deported to Egypt before the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that his life would be at risk.

My fear level was abnormal because I don't know the language in Egypt.

I don't know anything in Egypt.

And I have a Jesus tattoo on my right shoulder.

Egypt is primarily a Muslim country.

He ended up spending about a year in ICE custody.

But in 2009, he was released, and a judge allowed Tadros to stay in the country under supervisory conditions.

She had empathy for me.

I was literally tearing and disgusted of what I did at that time.

And when she granted my release, there's no words I can describe to explain that feeling.

For the next 16 years, Tadros worked legally for a medical laboratory and was self-employed in Internet marketing.

He never heard from ICE until they arrested him in May.

I did nothing wrong for all these years, and you guys have me in chains, my hands around my waist, my legs.

It's the worst feeling I've ever had.

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to our request for comment.

In court on Monday, they argued that Tadros had to be arrested again due to his prior conviction and needed him to be deported.

What the U.S. attorney stated was, look, Libya has turned him down.

You know, we requested to send him to Libya.

Libya rejected it.

We requested to send him to Sudan.

Sudan rejected it.

Right now, we've asked the government of Uzbekistan.

Simon Sandoval-Motionberg is Tadros' lead attorney and says it's unusual for ICE to pursue someone who's here legally and had court-ordered protection.

That someone be released from custody because ICE concludes that they can't send him anywhere, and then years later for ICE to come back and say, all right, you know, we've changed our minds.

We're going to try again to send you to a third country, that is something that did not happen until, you know, really three months ago, basically.

It just did not happen.

Sandoval-Motionberg says his client's story mirrors that of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, a Salvadoran man in Maryland who made national headlines after he was arrested and sent to a Salvadoran prison.

At the time, we thought it was kind of a quirky one-off case, but we later learned it was actually really just the tip of the spear.

The two of them both won protection from deportation to their native countries many, many years ago, and then the two of them were arrested by surprise.

On Monday, Judge Evelyn Padin ruled that those in the federal government have not identified any change in circumstances that caused them to place Tadros in custody in May 2025 while they pursue his removal to a third country, adding that Tadros has remained in perfect compliance with the conditions of release dictated in his order of supervision.

It's not just, quote-unquote, undocumented immigrants or illegal immigrants that they're going after, right?

This is someone who, again, won his case 16 years ago.

He's had a work permit ever since.

Entrepreneurship made me a fighter because I've been working with failed businesses for the past 11 years, and I'm always the type of person that if there's a problem, there's an opportunity.

But Judge Padin also wrote that Tadros can still be deported to a third country and that ICE must give Tadros a viable plan within the next two months.

Until then, Tadros cannot leave the tri-state area without permission as his future hangs in the balance.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.

Republicans in the Senate have been running into roadblocks as they try to pass President Trump's big, beautiful bill by a July 4th deadline, both from Democrats and members within their own party.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz asked New Jersey's junior U.S.

Senator Andy Kim where things stand with the legislation during this week's episode of Chat Box, as well as insight on the administration's next steps in the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.

Take a listen.

Where is the process right now?

Well, right now with the budget reconciliation, and for those that may not have been paying attention, this is what I would say is the most dangerous piece of legislation I've ever seen in my time in Congress so far, something that would be the single largest cut to health care in American history.

Sixteen million people would lose their health care, including people with disabilities.

Where does that number come from?

That comes from CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, so not a partisan office.

They estimate 16 million people would have their health care cut.

And it's not just people on Medicaid or the marketplace ACA.

I had hospital systems here tell me that if there are major cuts to Medicaid, their hospitals could very well close.

Hospitals in New Jersey or rural hospitals around the country could very well close because of this.

Right now we saw this pass through the House of Representatives, and all three Republican members of Congress from New Jersey, Chris Smith, Jeff Andrew, and Tom Kaine Jr. voted to support this.

It's with the Senate right now.

They're trying to push it forward.

We're going to be coming up to a vote.

I can't tell you exactly when.

And then it'll go--if it passes the Senate, it'll go back to the House of Representatives.

And I really urge people across New Jersey, let those three members of Congress that voted for it last time around know how they feel about it because it is very dangerous and it's going to hurt a lot of people in this state.

I wanted you to give us some context on the Israel and Iran conflict.

But the president making news saying he's going to give two weeks for diplomacy to work before he makes a decision on whether or not to join Israel in its offensive.

What's happening there?

I know you have some experience in that region.

Yeah, this is something that I've worked on for a long time.

It's dangerous what's happening.

This is a very precarious moment.

I spent a large part of my life before Congress working in national security, counterterrorism, and in particular, countering Iranian violence.

So I have a lot of concerns about their efforts to try to get a nuclear weapon, a lot of things.

And I do think we need to be taking steps there.

But diplomacy needs to be tried here, especially since there is an actual opening on that front.

And I was frustrated that there have been efforts that have tried to close that window and make it difficult for us to try that out.

But yes, I do think that we need to have a push.

I hope that President Trump follows through on that and really tries to see if there is a way for an agreement.

Because not only is that the better route, but it is also the one that has the greatest chance of actually being able to stop a development towards a nuclear bomb.

It's unlikely that the Israelis are going to be able to bomb Iran and to submission, whatever submission means in this case.

That's correct.

They don't have the - Israel does not have the military capability to destroy the three nuclear facility sites.

The United States has some greater weaponry, but still no guarantee that it could actually completely destroy that ability to manufacture.

The only thing that we can do that has the greatest likelihood to be able to stop this in the long run is through diplomacy.

It is worth a shot, and conflict should always be a last resort.

And I say this as someone who saw international dithering and other problems fail to stop North Korea from achieving a nuclear weapon that now has nuclear weapons pointed at my family in South Korea.

Like my family, people in South Korea live under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

So I get it.

I don't want Iran to be able to get a nuclear weapon, and I feel very strongly about that.

But I also, because of that, want to make sure that we try to go the diplomatic route before we move down other paths.

And that's what I'll be trying to push forward on, plus making sure that the American people have a say in this.

And this is not something that President Trump can or should be able to do unilaterally.

You can see David's entire interview with Senator Andy Kim streaming tonight on the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

And make sure you tune in to Reporters' Roundtable tomorrow, where we hear from gubernatorial candidates Mikey Sherrill and Jack Cittarelli in their first joint appearance since the primary, speaking at an NJBIA forum.

That's Friday at noon, also streaming on our YouTube channel.

Yeah, as you heard in David's conversation with Senator Kim, Congress is struggling to come to an agreement on the reconciliation bill.

If it goes through, advocates warn hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics are at risk of closing, which would limit access not just to abortion providers but basic care many women have come to rely on.

Raven Santana reports.

Thank you for calling the Women's Centers.

This is Roxanne speaking.

How can I help you?

Roxanne McNellis says her phone hasn't stopped ringing in the wake of state-level abortion bans and the looming threat of Medicaid funding cuts.

She and other reproductive health advocates warn that if the budget reconciliation package, currently before the U.S. Senate becomes law, a provision to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood could serve as a backdoor nationwide abortion ban, potentially eliminating access to one in four abortion providers across the country.

We've been seeing people call our hotline to ask, "Is abortion legal?

Are you going to cancel my appointment?

Is this something that I can still get?

Do I need to hurry up and make a decision?

Maybe I'm not sure, but I think I'm going to run out of time."

McNellis, the public affairs director for the Women's Centers, says the surge in demand and mounting challenges in providing care are especially troubling for the low-income patients they serve.

And so this bill is such a slap in the face because we're cutting off access to these services that we know people need for their health.

We know that they need to break out of cycles of poverty, ultimately to pay for tax cuts for the most affluent.

The Women's Centers is a network of independent abortion and reproductive health providers with locations in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and the Cherry Hill Women's Center in New Jersey.

McNellis notes that they are increasingly seeing patients traveling from outside of New Jersey in search of care.

Today here at our Cherry Hill Women's Center, actually one out of four patients that we see comes from outside of the state of New Jersey.

Increasingly, that is states like Texas, Florida, Carolinas, Virginia, places where abortion is banned or pushed completely out of reach.

But we also even see patients from our neighboring state of Pennsylvania, where although abortion still remains legal, it is plagued with barriers and obstacles.

You know, the other thing that people need to understand about this defund Planned Parenthood provision in this big betrayal of a bill is that more than 90 percent of those 200 health centers that could be at risk of closure would be in states with abortion access.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill-Johnson is raising an urgent warning about the potential impact on patients and communities nationwide.

If the bill passes up to 200 Planned Parenthood health centers could be forced to close, leaving many patients without accessible alternatives, forcing them to travel long distances, delay critical care, or go without it altogether.

So when health centers close in communities across the country, it puts pressure on the health systems around them to absorb patients.

It means that when a rural hospital closes, which are very much at risk in this big betrayal of a bill, it means that more patients will have to travel further or they may end up in the emergency room in other areas.

So it actually impacts our ability to get access to care, regardless of whether or not you are a Medicaid recipient.

When a hospital closes, everyone loses.

Which really just means that Planned Parenthood is kicked out of the Medicaid program.

About 30% of the patients that come to Planned Parenthood health centers in New Jersey use Medicaid as their insurance.

So you're effectively cutting off those patients from their health care provider.

The executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey says the consequences of the legislation, if passed, would not only be devastating, they would take effect immediately.

On average, we see about 100 patients a month from states that are not New Jersey.

And we know that number is likely higher because people are scared to disclose if they're from a state where there is an abortion ban.

Everyone I spoke with emphasized if clinics are forced to close or reduce services due to funding cuts, other providers like community health centers would be unable to meet the increased demand, leaving many patients without access to vital care.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

Support for The Medical Report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

That's going to do it for us tonight, but join us tomorrow for a special edition of NJ Spotlight News celebrating Juneteenth.

Now, today marks the federal holiday, but New Jersey recognizes the anniversary of the end of slavery on the third Friday in June.

So we're featuring the work of the State Reparations Council, which spent two years studying New Jersey's deep and often overlooked involvement in slavery, along with how it impacts the lives of black residents today.

I'm Brianna Vanosi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Have a great night.

Stay cool.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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