Trump suffers yet another court loss in ploy to strongarm local governments

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration's entire lawsuit against New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill's executive order limiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to nonpublic areas of state property, rejecting every legal theory the Justice Department threw at the policy.

Sherrill's February order bars state executive branch employees from letting federal immigration officers into nonpublic areas of state buildings, including courthouses, to carry out civil immigration enforcement, unless agents have a judicial warrant. It doesn't restrict ICE from operating in public areas or on federal, county, or municipal property at all.

The Trump DOJ sued, arguing the policy was preempted by federal immigration law and unconstitutionally discriminated against and regulated the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner rejected every claim. On preemption, she found none of the federal statutes DOJ cited actually require states to help enforce immigration law, since Congress built a voluntary cooperation framework rather than a mandatory one — meaning New Jersey's decision not to volunteer its courthouses doesn't conflict with federal law at all.

Castner leaned on a Ninth Circuit ruling to make the point plain.

"Refusing to help is not the same as impeding," the court noted, quoting that precedent.

On the discrimination claim, Castner found DOJ couldn't identify any comparable non-federal agency getting better treatment than ICE, since only the federal government is authorized to enforce civil immigration law in the first place. And on the regulation claim, she ruled New Jersey was simply acting as a property owner setting rules for its own buildings, not illegally dictating how federal agents do their jobs elsewhere.

The ruling adds New Jersey to a growing list of states, including Illinois, Colorado, and Minnesota, where courts have rejected nearly identical Trump DOJ lawsuits targeting state and local limits on immigration enforcement cooperation. Earlier this week, a Trump suit against the City of Rochester, New York, on its immigration "sanctuary" law was similarly dismissed.

New Jersey has been a flashpoint for resistance to Trump administration immigration policies, including widespread protests at a for-profit immigration detention center in Newark that led to the Justice Department criminally charging a congresswoman.