Judge Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Over New Jersey's ICE Property Restrictions

A federal judge in Newark dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit against New Jersey on Friday, September 4, ending a legal fight over how far a state can go to keep ICE off its property.

U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner, appointed by President Joe Biden, threw out the Department of Justice's case with prejudice in a 30-page opinion, according to nj.com and Yahoo News. That means the DOJ can't refile the same claims in her court.

What the Order Actually Does

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed Executive Order No. 12 on February 11, 2026. It bars ICE agents from "entering, accessing, or using nonpublic areas" of state property and blocks the agency from using state facilities as a staging area, processing site, or operations base. Agents with a judicial warrant are exempt, according to nj.com and the Epoch Times.

The DOJ sued in late February, filing a 21-page complaint that accused Sherrill of "blatant disregard for federal laws" and a "deliberate action that jeopardizes the public safety of All Americans," per the Philadelphia Inquirer. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi said the order was designed to "obstruct and endanger law enforcement," nj.com reported. Bondi was removed from her post by President Trump about six weeks after the suit was filed, a separate fact nj.com noted without tying it to the case's outcome.

The Legal Reasoning

Castner rejected the DOJ's core argument that the Immigration and Nationality Act preempts New Jersey's order. "Congress contemplated state assistance in federal immigration enforcement, but it contemplated that assistance on a voluntary basis," she wrote, according to the Inquirer. "The fact that New Jersey has decided not to volunteer... is in accordance, not in conflict, with Congress's design."

She also dismissed the DOJ's claim that the order made compliance with federal law "impossible" for ICE. "The Court finds this response unconvincing," Castner wrote, per the Epoch Times and ZeroHedge. "The Court also finds no conflict preemption."

Yahoo News reported the opinion also rejected the DOJ's discrimination argument, finding that state and local law enforcement aren't legally comparable to federal immigration agents for the purposes of an equal-treatment claim.

Castner did concede that the federal government has an obligation to remove people in the country illegally. But she found "nothing in the [Immigration and Nationality Act] indicates that states are required to assist the federal government in meeting this obligation," according to the Epoch Times.

The Anti-Commandeering Doctrine

This isn't a novel theory invented for Sherrill. It's the anti-commandeering doctrine under the Tenth Amendment, the idea that Washington can't force state governments to spend their own personnel and property enforcing federal law. The Inquirer noted that judges have applied the same reasoning to dismiss similar DOJ suits against New York, Minnesota, and Los Angeles this year.

Conservatives have relied on it in other contexts, like fighting federal gun-control mandates on state agencies. A state genuinely cannot be conscripted into federal enforcement against its will.

The DOJ's counterargument in its complaint is that there's a difference between a state declining to help and a state actively locking ICE out of properties it might otherwise access under normal circumstances, including for warrant-based operations complicated by the state's broader posture. The DOJ argued the order's "clear objective" was "obstructing" the president's constitutional duty to enforce immigration law faithfully, not merely declining to lend a hand. Castner found that claim legally insufficient, but it reflects a genuine policy disagreement over where "non-cooperation" ends and "obstruction" begins, one the courts have now weighed in on repeatedly but that voters and Congress could still revisit.

Reactions

Sherrill called the ruling a win on X. "ICE is not making New Jersey's communities any safer," she said, describing federal agents as "untrained." "Once again, Trump tried to stop us, and once again we won."

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said the order was "plainly lawful" and vowed her office would "continue to work tirelessly alongside Governor Sherrill to protect our state's immigrant communities."

The ACLU of New Jersey's legal director, Jeanne LoCicero, and Pooja Chaudhuri of the Democracy Defenders Fund both filed friend-of-the-court briefs backing the order and praised the dismissal, according to InsiderNJ.

The DOJ did not respond to requests for comment from any of the outlets covering the ruling.

Whether the DOJ appeals to the Third Circuit remains to be seen, which would test whether this string of dismissals against sanctuary-style state orders, now four for four including New York, Minnesota, and Los Angeles, holds up at a higher level. No appeal has been filed as of this writing.