8th District congressional candidate Mussab Ali is preparing to take legal action after the Jersey City BOE banned him from school property last month for allegedly helping organize a high school student walkout to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ban prevents Ali from entering any school buildings in the district, as HCV first reported, unless he calls Superintendent of Schools Dr. Norma Fernandez and she grants him explicit permission.
Ali previously questioned the constitutionality of the measure, given his polling location to vote is literally inside a school.
“I finally got the resolution in print: I’m going to be pursuing action very soon,” he said, declining to get into specifics since the matter is going to court.
The beef between the current BOE, more specifically President Noemi Velazquez and Vice President Dejon Morris, and Ali began due to ICE walkouts at four Jersey City high schools one month ago, as HCV first reported.
Students – mostly underclassmen – from Ferris, Dickinson, Snyder, and County Prep high schools organized a walkout of their respective schools on February 13, marching to meet up on Newark Avenue and 4th Street before proceeding down the pedestrian avenue and turning right on Grove Street to City Hall.
There, they denounced federal immigration enforcement practices that have been tearing families apart and kidnapping people without due process by mask agents in unmarked vehicles to detention facilities across the country.
Similarly, U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8) spoke in solidarity with students at the North Bergen High School walkout against ICE on February 6th.
The majority of the Jersey City BOE trustees believed Ali was behind the multi-school walkout, criticizing Ali for allegedly encouraging students to leave school grounds without authorization or a parent or guardian, leaving them liable for student injuries.
Velazquez said at the time that students who leave class or school grounds without a parent or guardian will receive discipline for an unexcused absence, slamming Ali for pushing “their passion at the expense of their academic success and safety.”
Velazquez and other board trustees have argued a sit-in, a walkout to a designated pre-planned area approved by the board, or an after-school or weekend rally would have been supported by the board as opposed to the walkouts that occurred and led to Ali’s ban.
Regardless, Ali has maintained that the students organized the demonstration and that he didn’t even step foot on school property during the protest, which he praised as an exercise in students’ First Amendment rights.
The feud seemingly reached a fever pitch after a walkout before last period was thwarted at McNair Academic High School later in February.
That prompted a “ICE OUT Jersey City” rally on Saturday, March 1st that saw high school and college students among other youth from Jersey City and Newark gather at the Grove Street PATH Station and again march to City Hall.
There they rallied against ICE again and called out and certain speakers called out the BOE for hindering students instead of helping them, referring to threats of punitive measures like suspensions or missing opportunities like prom as well as Ali’s ban.
This included Hudson County Commissioner Bill O’Dea (D-2), who, after praising students for taking a student and denounced the action against Ali, dared the onlooking Morris in the audience to ban him too stating he’d wear it as a “badge of honor.”
Meanwhile, another fiery confrontation broke out between Climate Revolution NJ Executive Director Ben Dziobek and Velazquez later in the rally, when he called her out on stage for banning Ali from school and cheered on rally goers to vote against her and Morris in upcoming elections this year (even though she just won re-election last year).
This prompted Velazquez to approach Dziobek during the rally on the steps of City Hall and tell him “ICE would come for me before they would come for you,” leading to Dziobek to return to the microphone and further slam her for comments on his skin color in front of youth organizers given his Cuban background.
Velazquez accused Ali of orchestrating Dziobek’s actions, affirming that she supported the cause but not the action.
She also said O’Dea “lost focus” in the “heat and passion of things” regarding his dig at Morris, maintaining that the district still opposes any future walkouts.