A federal judge has thrown out the Trump administration's lawsuit against New Jersey, leaving Governor Mikie Sherrill's sanctuary executive order in force. Judge Georgette Castner dismissed the case on September 4, rejecting all three of the Justice Department's claims against Executive Order 12, her order barring federal immigration officers from the nonpublic areas of state property. The department has not said whether it will appeal — the one move left to it.
The Justice Department sued in February, twelve days after Sherrill signed the order. Announcing the case, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said: "Federal agents are risking their lives to keep New Jersey citizens safe, and yet New Jersey's leaders are enacting policies designed to obstruct and endanger law enforcement. States may not deliberately interfere with our efforts to remove illegal aliens and arrest criminals — New Jersey's sanctuary policies will not stand." The complaint argued that the order "stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress," that it directly regulates and discriminates against the federal government, and that it singles out immigration officials "for unfavorable and uncooperative treatment when no other member of the public or law enforcement is so treated." Denied the use of jails and courthouses, the department said, ICE is pushed into unpredictable at-large arrests in the community, while people convicted of aggravated assault, burglary and drug and human trafficking are released instead of being handed over for removal.
Executive Order 12, signed on February 11, orders state departments and agencies not to "permit or consent to federal immigration officers entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas of State property for the purpose of facilitating federal enforcement of civil immigration law," and bars state property from being used as a "staging area, processing location, or operations base" for immigration operations; reporting on the order records an exception where officers hold a judicial warrant or court order. Sherrill signed it alongside a state portal for residents to report ICE activity to the attorney general, saying: "Today, we are making clear that the Trump administration's lawless actions will not go unchecked in New Jersey. I will stand up for New Jerseyans' right to be safe."
Castner held that the order does none of what the department alleged. It does not stop federal agents from enforcing immigration law anywhere in New Jersey, she found; it says only that the state will not hand over its own property and resources to help. "Refusing to help is not the same as impeding," she wrote, noting that federal immigration law anticipates voluntary cooperation from the states, not mandatory assistance. The government had standing to sue, but each of its three claims failed to state a plausible constitutional case.
Sherrill answered the ruling the same day: "ICE is not making New Jersey's communities any safer. That's why I signed an Executive Order restricting access to nonpublic state property by its untrained agents. Once again, Trump tried to stop us, and once again we won. My number one priority will always be to protect New Jerseyans, and I will continue to fight for safe communities for everyone in our state." Attorney General Jennifer Davenport called the lawsuit "baseless" and the order "plainly lawful"; back in February, asked about the suit, Sherrill had said the federal government should focus "instead of attacking states like New Jersey working to keep people safe" on "actually training their ICE agents."
New Jersey is one front in a national campaign. The Justice Department says the New Jersey suit was the latest in a series its Civil Division has brought against sanctuary policies, including in New York, Minnesota and Los Angeles, under Bondi's first-day order to hunt down state and local policies impeding federal immigration operations. Inside New Jersey itself, the department had already sued four cities — Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Hoboken — over their sanctuary policies in May 2025; a federal judge dismissed that case too, ruling that the government lacked standing because the statewide Immigrant Trust Directive imposes similar limits on its own.
For people in New Jersey, the position today is the one the order created in February: ICE can operate in the state, but it cannot use state property closed to the public — jails, courthouses, agency buildings — as its arrest rooms or its base without a judicial warrant, and the state will not lend its facilities to the effort. What happens next rests in Washington: accept the dismissal, or take the fight to the Third Circuit appeals court in Philadelphia.
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