Overview
- A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit on Friday, leaving New Jersey’s Executive Order 12 in place and barring the DOJ from overturning the policy through that case.
- Executive Order 12, issued in February, stops ICE from entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of state-owned buildings without a court order and forbids state agencies from offering state property as staging or processing sites.
- Judge Georgette Castner wrote that Congress treats state help in immigration enforcement as voluntary and rejected DOJ claims that the order is preempted, unlawfully discriminates against the federal government, or illegally regulates federal agents.
- Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the state attorney general, and groups such as the ACLU of New Jersey praised the dismissal as a protection for state workers and residents while the Justice Department did not immediately comment.
- The decision aligns New Jersey with other courts that have rebuffed near-identical DOJ suits and could constrain how ICE uses state-owned spaces, though separate DOJ litigation over other local rules remains active and results have varied.