Judge tosses DOJ lawsuit against 4 New Jersey 'sanctuary cities'
Source: Politico
06/24/2026 06:52 PM EDT
The Department of Justice lacks the standing to challenge “sanctuary” immigration policies in four New Jersey cities, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday, handing the Trump administration a striking setback after more than a year of litigation.
In May 2025, the DOJ sued Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Hoboken, alleging that their policies curtailing local cooperation with federal immigration authorities ran afoul of the Constitution. The four municipalities’ policies represented “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws and the federal authorities that administer them,” the lawsuit argued.
But District Judge Evelyn Padin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled that the Trump administration does not have the grounds to sue the four cities at all — in large part because their policies are nearly identical to the statewide Immigrant Trust Directive, which has been previously upheld in court multiple times.
The directive, put into place under former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration in 2018 and codified into state law by Gov. Mikie Sherrill earlier this year, severely limits when state and local law enforcement can work with federal immigration agents to enforce civil immigration law. Some GOP-led state and local governments across the country, by contrast, opt to have their police work with federal immigration agents. Two Republican-led county governments filed a lawsuit to overturn the directive in 2019, but were rebuffed by both the District Court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/24/new-jersey-tosses-doj-lawsuit-sanctuary-cities-00975065?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000019e-fbaa-d58c-af9f-fbff84fc0000
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And he does it to tie up the courts. Time to hit him back with his own medicine! 
