Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is defending the city’s sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants, one day after the Trump administration announced federal agents who patrol the U.S. border will be deployed to cities across the country where local jurisdictions are hindering stepped up immigration enforcement.

In a statement issued Sunday, Baraka called the latest move divisive and disputed Attorney General William Barr’s assertion that “sanctuary cities” protect criminals living in the country illegally. Barr’s language “incites hatred,” Baraka said.

“The Trump Administration plan to bolster ICE enforcement forces with tactical units will undermine our efforts to build community trust," Baraka said in a statement released Sunday. “When (Barr) says sanctuary is ‘misguided ideology triumphing over common sense law enforcement,’ he undermines the common decency aspects of our policy."

As 200,000 daily riders know, there are times when the Portal Bridge is neither portal nor bridge.

It is a rusty, creaky, swing-truss contraption that squats 25 feet above the Hackensack River, and when boats need to pass underneath, it becomes the vortex from hell. Sometimes it fails to close properly — this happens 15 percent of the time — and it triggers a sequence of events that can haunt your dreams.

Trains from Boston to D.C. stop and smolder. The control center at Penn Station freaks out. Jersey commuters, sacks of jangled nerves in sweaty human packages, re-evaluate the choices they’ve made with their lives. Amtrak crews literally march out to the middle of the bridge and bang the rails into a closed position with sledgehammers.

This story is part of a new NJ.com series: “Black in N.J.,” which celebrates Black culture in the Garden State and seeks to further discussion about issues facing New Jersey’s Black community.

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When you walk into Source of Knowledge in Newark, you’re in a space that is unapologetically Black.

Incense burns. Soulful music plays in the background. Books by Black writers line the shelves and art pieces from Senegal adorn the walls.

Yet the small book shop, located downtown on the corner of Broad and Lafayette streets, is easy to miss. Other than a tiny beige banner displaying the store’s name, the building’s worn facade is nearly invisible, outshined by the gleaming buildings nearby: chic new apartments, a Courtyard Marriott hotel, the cavernous Prudential Center arena.

New Jersey’s Roman Catholic dioceses have given a two-week extension to childhood victims of sexual assault considering filing for compensation from a fund the church set up, the account’s co-administrator said Friday.

Camille Biros, the co-administrator of the fund covering all five dioceses, including the Archdiocese of Newark, said in a phone interview that so far more than $10 million in 81 different cases has been paid out. The previous deadline for submissions to be filed with the fund was Feb. 15. It is now Feb. 29.

This is the second time the deadline had been extended.

As the focus tightens on allegations of harassment against women in New Jersey politics — including in his own campaign — Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday the state government will re-evaluate its current workplace standards and training.

The goal, the Democratic governor said, is to make sure all state employees are treated equally, regardless of sex, race, or gender identity.

“I have said time and time again that my goal is to make New Jersey stronger and fairer for everyone," Murphy said in a statement. “Make no mistake: I believe that a more respectful culture for women in our state is a moral imperative.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Federal Reserve chairman said Wednesday a lengthy closing of the Portal Bridge or Hudson River tunnels could deliver a hit to the U.S. economy.

Powell, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, acknowledged the economic threat if the century-old infrastructure should fail before it is replaced.

"If it were sustained, yes,” Powell said. “Things happen and we fix them and they don’t show up much in GDP, but if they’re sustained, then, yes.”

The powers of the Justice Department are among the gravest our government has, to strip people of their liberty. And now, apparently, they are subject to the stormy impulses of one man: The Mad King.

President Trump is interfering with a purpose that is nakedly political and getting what he wants, thanks to his loyal henchman, Attorney General William Barr. In an extraordinary reversal, the DOJ just downgraded its recommended prison sentence for Trump’s buddy, Roger Stone, hours after the president fumed about it on Twitter.

“This is a huge deal,” Elie Honig, a former New Jersey and federal prosecutor, told us on Wednesday. “There’s a long-standing norm that has been observed, going back many decades in both political parties, that you just do not mess with DOJ.”