Trump sues N.J. Gov. Mikie Sherill over new sanctuary policy

The Trump administration has sued to try to stop New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill’s new sanctuary policy that bars federal officers from staging on state property, saying it amounts to illegal obstruction of federal immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit asks the U.S. district court in New Jersey to declare the executive order invalid.

Ms. Sherill, a Democrat, was carrying out a new law passed by the state legislature directing state and local employees to focus on their local duties.

Her executive order, signed on Feb. 11, bars “federal immigration officers” from entering non-public areas of state facilities. It also bars the use of even some public areas, such as parking lots, for “staging” or “processing” during civil immigration enforcement.

The Justice Department said the ban on non-public areas also means it will be difficult for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to carry out deportation “detainers,” which are requests for cooperation in picking up deportation targets from prisons and jails.

If federal immigration officers cannot enter the non-public areas of those facilities, it means the targets will be released into the public, which ICE says is more dangerous for a hand-off than the controlled environment inside a prison or jail.

“This law poses an intolerable obstacle to federal immigration enforcement and directly regulates and discriminates against the federal government, in contravention of the Supremacy Clause,” the lawsuit charges.

Acting New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said the Justice Department was “wasting its resources” in bringing the lawsuit.

Ms. Sherill also criticized the case.

“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 … so they can operate better and more safely,” she said.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of challenges to Democrat-led states and local governments who have made a point of declaring their resistance to federal immigration efforts.

California has been at the leading edge, with one law barring federal officers from wearing masks and another requiring them to wear identification so they can be tracked.

A federal district judge blocked the mask law, saying California only targeted the federal government but didn’t apply it to state and local officers, making it illegal discrimination against the U.S. government under the Supremacy Clause.

A federal appeals court has blocked the identification law.

The discrimination argument could become a factor in New Jersey, where the law singles out the federal government and immigration enforcement in particular. The lawsuit says the law doesn’t even seem to apply to the FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration.

Even as some sanctuary policies are struggling, others have survived legal challenges.

States’ laws to restrict cooperation with detainers have generally been upheld.

And New York recently prevailed in a case where the Trump administration challenged its ban on arrests at state courthouses.

The federal judge in that case ruled that allowing those arrests amounted to “commandeering” state officers, because ICE was taking advantage of the safe environment New York provided in its courthouses.