Staged employment
event was a mistake

What the Monmouth County Residents for Immigrants Rights called a test on Saturday, we would describe as a hoax perpetrated on Freehold Borough. The stunt staged by the so-called immigrants rights group was a low point that calls its credibility into question.

In a recent editorial concerning the borough’s situation with day laborers, the News Transcript said it feared a group that included people from out of town would not have Freehold Borough’s best interests at heart. Sad to say — and even though we now know there are people from the borough involved with the group — we believe our concern was born out on Saturday.

The hoax began Friday when New Jersey media outlets received an e-mail stating that day laborers would show up at the closed hiring area, the so-called "muster zone," on Throck-morton Street on Saturday morning to seek work from employers.

The borough had closed the muster zone at the end of December, with officials claiming it had become unwieldy and a magnet for residents and employers from other towns.

On Saturday, the media dutifully showed up to record what would happen at the muster zone because that would have been news.

As it turned out, however, no "real" contractors came by to seek help for the day. Instead, the immigrants rights group had its own members pick up day laborers, drive them a short distance down the street, and let them out.

The idea of this exercise, we were told by those who organized it, was to see how police would react. Several officers had been assigned to the scene, unaware — as was the media — that this was to be a staged event.

On Monday at 7:45 a.m., by the way, there were no day laborers standing at the old muster zone waiting to be hired.

Once again, it seems, the day laborers were used by a group that has its own agenda to push. Freehold Borough police and officials who staffed the muster zone on Saturday were used, as was the media.

The Monmouth County Residents for Immigrants Rights may well have legitimate concerns about some of the problems that legal and illegal immigrants face in the United States. Staging a phony test to determine how a municipality will react in a given instance does not serve the group’s cause or the immigrants’ struggle.

It does, however, completely undermine the so-called rights group’s credibility. From our perspective, they only get one chance to cry wolf.