A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed the Trump administration’s challenge to policies in four New Jersey cities that limit how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal civil immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Evelyn Padin ruled the federal government lacks standing to challenge the policies in Hoboken, Jersey City, Paterson, and Newark because, even absent the local policies, the state’s Immigrant Trust Directive would still bar local authorities from supporting federal immigration enforcement.
“The Federal Government’s case has a fundamental flaw — it treats the Challenged Policies as though they operate in isolation. They do not,” Padin wrote in her 38-page decision.
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Jersey City Mayor James Solomon cheered the decision, saying his city “will always protect our immigrant neighbors.”
“This ruling is a victory for our values and cements our place as America’s Golden Door. We will continue to do everything within our power to protect our neighbors and push back against the Trump Administration’s abusive and cruel federal overreach,” Solomon said in a statement.
Assemblyman Ravi Bhalla (D-Hudson), who was mayor of Hoboken when the city implemented its sanctuary policy, commended the judge, saying she “saw right through the Trump administration’s attempt to politicize the Justice Department.”
“Cities and states have every right to decide how their own resources are used, and that includes making sure our tax dollars aren’t spent separating families and deporting our neighbors. This is a huge win for the people of New Jersey,” he said in a statement.
Multiple courts have upheld the state-level directive as constitutional. Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, signed a version of the directive into law earlier this year.
Among other things, the directive bars state and local authorities from initiating stops based on an individual’s suspected immigration status or for violations of civil immigration law. It also bars officers from inquiring about a person’s immigration status unless it is relevant to an ongoing investigation of an indictable offense, which is what New Jersey calls felonies. The policy includes exemptions for criminal law enforcement, judicial warrants, and certain joint federal operations not related to civil immigration enforcement.
The Trump administration’s suit did not challenge the state-level policy, and that lack of a challenge was “fatal,” Padin said, because officials in the four cities would still be barred from aiding immigration efforts by the state directive in most cases, so the court could not deliver relief even if it backed the government’s legal arguments.
“A plaintiff cannot establish redressability when the requested relief would remove one source of injury, but leave another independent source in place, producing no practical change,” wrote Padin, a Biden appointee.
The federal government had argued the cities’ policies could not stand because they sought to regulate the actions of federal officials, though the policies only controlled the actions of local law enforcement.
The Trump administration also argued a decision striking the cities’ sanctuary policies could eventually lead to the state policy being overturned, but Padin said that would not happen before her court because she is bound by circuit court precedent upholding the Immigrant Trust Directive (that ruling came after Ocean County’s challenge of the directive).
“Ocean County is binding precedent that this Court cannot disregard; only the Third Circuit sitting en banc, or the Supreme Court, may overrule a precedential Third Circuit decision,” Padin said.
Differences between the state directive and local policies could allow the court to issue some relief, Padin said, and policies in Jersey City and Hoboken placed greater restrictions on local officials’ ability to comply with requests to detain individuals already in custody at a carceral facility for federal immigration authorities.
But the federal government did not allege any specific harms as a result of more restrictive policies in the two Hudson County municipalities, so the judge could provide no relief.
“The only examples of alleged non-cooperation in the complaint implicate the Essex County Correctional Facility, which (is) operated by Essex County,” Padin wrote, adding the government had not submitted facts that suggest it could face future harms as a result of the policies.
Padin dismissed the suit without prejudice, so the Trump administration could bring a renewed challenge to the four cities’ policies.
