Feds Cite ‘Current Crisis Of Illegal Immigration' In Push Against NJ Sanctuary City Orders

By Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor

September 11, 2025

The Trump administration is arguing to a federal judge that a recent increase in the flow of migrants into the United States requires courts to reconsider prior rulings that have upheld a New Jersey directive providing sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.

Four New Jersey cities that have been sued by the administration over their local sanctuary policies have argued that the constitutionality of sanctuary orders was upheld in 2021 by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in a case brought by Ocean County. But the Trump administration said the judge overseeing the new dispute should instead consider two other immigration-related decisions that found in the federal government’s favor.

“The current crisis of illegal immigration, which was allowed to reach critical levels after Ocean County was decided, requires a re-examination of that ruling,” the administration says in a letter filed with the court last week.

The Trump administration has challenged policies in Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, and Paterson that limit local officials’ ability to share information with federal immigration authorities, arguing those policies are preempted by federal law. Attorneys for the cities have argued that the administration has no standing to sue because the cities would have to follow the state’s sanctuary policy, called the Immigrant Trust Directive, if they had no local sanctuary policies.

But the administration alleges that those local policies “impose even greater restrictions” than the state’s directive.

“The Newark policy, for example, precludes ‘any contract, agreement, or arrangement to detain immigrants in deportation proceedings, including but not limited to Intergovernmental Service Agreements,’” the administration’s letter reads.

The four cities have asked U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin to review this case speedily for public safety purposes.

Gurbir Grewal, an attorney who represents Hoboken and Newark in this dispute, is a former New Jersey attorney general who crafted the Immigrant Trust Act, which restricts when state and local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration agents.

A federal judge in 2021 ruled the directive was not preempted by federal law because it sought to regulate the behavior of state and local officials, not federal ones, and requires local officials not to aid federal immigration efforts, rather than attempt to frustrate those efforts.

“The United States already brought such a challenge and lost,” Grewal wrote in a filing in the case last month.

The 3rd Circuit decision from 2021 also found that the state directive is not preempted by federal law.

Federal attorneys argued in the newest letter that the cities’ policies discriminate against the federal government because Paterson’s policy does not apply to local law enforcement officials placed on federal task forces and therefore treats U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection differently than other agencies.

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