On February 11, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed Executive Order No. 12, “prohibit[ing] ICE agents from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of State property for their operations unless authorized by a judicial warrant.” This state order complements the state assembly bill NJ A4446, coined the “F*CK ICE Bill,” which seeks to create a private right of action allowing individuals to sue federal agents in response to the “killing [of] Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.” As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived in the Hoboken and Jersey City area, Hudson County Executive Craig Guy signed a similar order a few weeks prior to the governor on January 29.
On February 23, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a response in a lawsuit filed against the State of New Jersey and Gov. Sherrill. In a press release, Attorney General Pamela Bondi asserted that “states may not deliberately interfere with [federal] efforts to remove illegal aliens and arrest criminals.”
There is currently a heated controversy between the federal and state courts. The order obeys the New Jersey Safe Communities Act, approved by the state legislature, that allows the state attorney general’s office to protect individuals in certain locations, such as courthouses, hospitals, shelters, and food pantries. Opponents argue the policy conflicts with the Supremacy Clause and the 2025 decision in CoreCivic, Inc. v. Murphy, ruling that state bans against private immigration detention center contracts as interference with federal authority and unconstitutional. The order contradicts the Supreme Court decision as “a state law that wholesale deprives the federal government of its chosen method of detaining individuals for violating federal law cannot survive Supremacy Clause scrutiny”; in other words, critics argue that state laws cannot prevent the federal government from carrying out federal law as the Supremacy Clause puts federal power over state power.
Following the suit, Gov. Sherrill responded in defense of the executive order and redirected attention to federal law enforcement standards.:
“I think what the federal government needs to be focused on right now, instead of attacking states like New Jersey working to keep people safe, is actually training their ICE agents, with some modicum of training, like any law enforcement officer in the state of New Jersey would have, so that they can operate better and more safely.”
Those in support of Gov. Sherrill and her executive order have pointed out that the “federal lawsuit misspells Sherrill’s name multiple times” in an effort to further discredit the case compiled against them.
The case is currently going through the federal court system without any further comment. In other words, there are no “bright line rules regarding where our immigration laws are permitted to be enforced,” DHS Memorandum at 1, and instead, the location of a civil enforcement action is properly determined “on a case-by-case basis considering the totality of the circumstances,” ICE Memorandum at 2.
