Gov. Sherrill Signs NJ Immigration Enforcement Limit Bills

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed three immigration bills into law in Newark on March 25, formally limiting when New Jersey police can cooperate with federal immigration agents.

The signing puts state law behind the 2018 Immigrant Trust Directive, a policy first established by then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal during President Donald Trump’s first term. Advocates had pushed for years to codify the directive, worried a future administration could quietly pull it back without a legislative barrier in place. That concern wasn’t theoretical. With the Trump administration running a mass detention and deportation campaign across the country, the push to lock the protections into statute moved fast in Trenton this spring.

“In the past two months, we’ve watched poorly trained, masked ICE agents put communities across the country in danger,” Sherrill said at the signing ceremony. “In this state we have drawn a line, no, not here.”

Sherrill was joined by bill sponsors and Latino advocates from across New Jersey. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz, Sen. Benjie Wimberly, Assemblywoman Ellen Park, and Assemblywoman Annette Quijano all spoke before the governor signed.

The laws bar state and local police from helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in raids. Local departments can’t hand over office space, databases, or other law enforcement resources to federal immigration authorities. State correctional officers cannot allow ICE to interview people detained on criminal charges. New Jersey prosecutors are also blocked from using a defendant’s immigration status as the sole reason to hold them before trial.

Concrete. Wide-reaching. And years in the making.

The bills cleared both legislative chambers Monday. Republicans pushed back hard, with GOP leaders holding a rally on the Statehouse steps before the vote, calling the measures “insane” and arguing they would make New Jersey less safe by shielding criminals. Sherrill and bill sponsors rejected that framing directly, pointing to the laws’ focus on enforcement process rather than any protection for criminal conduct.

The numbers behind the legislation matter. Roughly 500,000 undocumented immigrants live in New Jersey. About 1 in 4 New Jerseyans is an immigrant, putting the state among the highest immigrant-share populations in the country, according to New Jersey Monitor coverage of the signing. For communities like Newark’s Ironbound, where Portuguese and Brazilian families have built generational roots, or in Elizabeth and Perth Amboy, where Central American immigrant communities run deep, the laws land as something more than a political statement.

They land as a message that the state won’t be a partner in federal enforcement sweeps.

That distinction matters to immigrant advocates who spent years working to get the Trust Directive off a single attorney general’s desk and into statute. The directive could have been reversed with a signature. That’s no longer true.

New Jersey isn’t alone in drawing these lines. Several states have passed similar sanctuary policies limiting local cooperation with ICE, and researchers have consistently found no link between such policies and increased crime rates. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has tracked the state’s Trust Directive since Grewal put it in place and has argued the new laws strengthen it against both federal pressure and any future state rollback.

Republicans will almost certainly challenge the laws’ scope, and the Trump administration has shown no reluctance to sue states over immigration policy conflicts. Federal preemption arguments have shaped fights in Texas, Arizona, and Illinois, and New Jersey will likely face similar pressure.

Sherrill signed the bills from Newark, not Trenton. That choice was deliberate. Newark is home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the state, a city where the stakes of federal enforcement aren’t abstract and where residents have watched ICE operations play out in their neighborhoods for years. Holding the ceremony there, flanked by legislators who represent communities directly affected, sent a signal about whose concerns drove the legislation and who the governor expects it to protect.