New Jersey’s New Governor Tackles Ice

Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey is picking a fight with ICE.

It looks like she’s getting one.

Newly sworn in and governing a state Democrats worried was slipping toward swing-state status, Sherrill is making immigration one of her first major policy initiatives — backing limits on the state’s state cooperation with federal agents, restricting their use of state property and trying to stop an immigration detention center from opening.

The Justice Department moved quickly last week to challenge her immigration executive order, setting up an early legal and political clash between the Trump administration and a Democratic governor in a region dotted with competitive House primaries.

The confrontation gives Sherrill an early chance to define her governorship, and a preview of how Democrats will try to thread the needle on immigration in a midterm year. After the killings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis, polling shows voters souring on ICE’s tactics — including in New York’s suburbs — raising the political upside for Democrats who pick this fight.

Sherrill, a former House member, came into office in January on the promise of pushing back against the Trump administration. On top of her immigration stance, her administration has sued over critical funding for a new rail tunnel to New York and the administration’s new childhood vaccine schedule.

Like other blue-state governors such as Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois, Sherrill is also using the levers of state power to counter the administration since her party is out of power in Washington, D.C.

Abigail Spanberger, the only other governor who took office this year, touched on immigration in her State of the Union rebuttal last Tuesday night, showing it is a focus of her administration as well.

“Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed, not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities,” she said.

Trump administration suggests more agents needed

Sherrill’s already getting pushback from the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security has called her proposals “legally illiterate” and said that “New Jersey will be less safe” as a result of them. And the agency said that such limits would be grounds for sending in more federal agents.

“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with us, that is when we have to have a more visible presence,” the agency said in a statement.

Sherrill finds herself between Republicans who reject “silos” between state and federal law enforcement and Democrats who want Sherrill to test the boundaries of what’s legally permissible. But her Democratic colleagues see her as a guardrail to President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration efforts. 

“Speaking to many of my constituents, they believe the only force and help at this moment is at the state level,” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) told POLITICO. “And I think that's what people expect for our new governor to do.”

It all comes as officials in New Jersey — a state with the second highest percentage of immigrant residents in America — faces a frontburner debate over how to deal with immigration policy at the state level, and everyone has ideas.

Republicans in Trenton are pushing for local police to work more with ICE. The pastor who did the invocation for Sherrill’s inauguration ceremony wants state law enforcement at places of worship to deal with federal immigration authorities. Some progressive Democrats even want a 50 percent tax on private immigration detention facilities — and send the proceeds to a pro-immigration fund.

“We want to make sure that we do everything in our power to disincentivize this kind of trend in New Jersey," Democratic Assembly member Ravi Bhalla, who is supporting the proposed tax, said in an interview.

It's up to Sherrill — a moderate Democrat — to determine how far to take her anti-ICE stance. She has taken a more antagonistic approach than her Democratic predecessor, Phil Murphy, a former diplomat who ushered in New Jersey’s so-called sanctuary policies but also tried to work with the president in other areas. She quickly hit the cable news circuit after taking office, comparing ICE to the secret police of East Germany and calling it Trump’s personal “militia.”

Now, she’s backing up the tough words with policies: She recently signed an executive order to limit ICE activity on state properties and set up a state online portal where residents can submit photos and videos of immigration officials — a move other Democratic states have taken. The DOJ is challenging the executive order, with Attorney General Pam Bondi saying it will “obstruct and endanger law enforcement.”

But Sherrill’s most consequential push is to support making permanent the state’s restrictions between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities — colloquially referred to as a “sanctuary” policy, which Murphy established. Unless it’s codified into law, that policy — known as the Immigrant Trust Directive — could be undone by a future governor. 

It wasn’t always a guarantee that Sherrill would support codifying the directive. During the general election, Sherrill gave vague answers if she supported it and even suggested she would tweakit to assist federal immigration agents if they face “real danger.”

But that was before two American citizens were killed by federal agents in Minnesota — which has caused backlash to the president’s immigration policies.

“We're seeing hits to small businesses as people are afraid to go to work, we're hearing concerns about the future as children are being kept home from school,” Sherrill said during a recent press conference. “The fear isn't just from people with undocumented status, but American citizens.”

'We have to confront the bully'

Just before Sherrill took office, Murphy pocket vetoed a bill that would codify a similar — but not identical — policy to the Immigrant Trust Directive that would limit cooperation with local police and ICE. Current state policy allows for limited exemptions for when local prisons and jails can work with ICE, specifically if someone has been convicted or charged with a serious crime or if someone is subject to a final order of removal signed by a federal judge.

Some groups, like the ACLU of New Jersey, have supported other proposals in the statehouse that would eliminate those carveouts in the directive for when local officials can work with ICE.

That could set up some pressure from Sherrill’s left.

“We need to make sure we're protecting as many people as possible in New Jersey — that's why it's important to have as robust of a law as possible,” Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, told POLITICO.

However, advocates may not get Sherrill to go much further than the directive. A senior Sherrill administration official said that New Jersey is “in a good place with our directive” and underscored that it has survived prior federal court challenges.

Other New Jersey Democrats are floating ideas that could push up against legal boundaries. McIver said if she were governor, she would “be trying to file charges against these ICE agents” (the Sherrill administration is investigating at least one ICE-involved shooting). One proposal in the statehouse would try to unmask ICE agents — something Sherrill supported while campaigning for governor — which legal experts have said would face legal challenges since states are generally prohibited from telling federal authorities how to act.

Regardless of external pressures from fellow Democrats, Sherrill’s administration is forced to set up a blueprint for how to respond to ICE agents across the state. A state law requires New Jersey’s Attorney General to set up “model policies” by July for how institutions like hospitals, schools and places of worship should respond to federal immigration agents on their premises.

Rev. Dr. Charles Boyer, a politically influential pastor who endorsed Sherrill’s candidacy and performed the invocation at her inauguration, told POLITICO that there would ideally be state resources in places of worship to respond to federal immigration agents.

“What it would look like ideally is I can make a quick call — or if there's reports of ICE in the area — state level law enforcement would be there to protect us from having to deal with ICE coming in,” he said in an interview. “I think also what some of that may have to look like is Troopers being stationed or going around to sensitive houses of worship that may have migrants in them.”

Boyer, however, acknowledged that picking a fight over immigration policies could antagonize Trump officials.

But he said it was a fight worth having.

“What makes me nervous is the Trump administration loves to try to make examples of folks,” he said. “[But] now is the time to stand up. I think inevitably whenever you have a bully willing to blow everything up there's going to be casualties. But we have to confront the bully.”