A federal judge has ruled that a New Jersey law effectively banning the detention of illegal aliens is unconstitutional.
“Given the border security crisis that has escalated the last few years, it is essential for our country to have the ability to detain illegal aliens who have violated federal law and are fighting deportation,” the Immigration Reform Law Institute’s Dale Wilcox said in a statement emailed to Breitbart News.
The law, approved by Democrats in the state legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), had forced the closure of three out of four immigration detention facilities across New Jersey and was set to shutter the fourth facility this month.
In practice, the law banned local and state agencies, as well as private firms, from contracting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain illegal aliens.
This week, United States District Court Judge Robert Kirsch, appointed by President Joe Biden, ruled that the law is unconstitutional because it blocks the federal government from properly carrying out its duties to enforce federal immigration law:
… New Jersey’s disagreement with the manner in which ICE detains individuals for civil immigration violations, or that the federal government detains individuals for civil immigration violations at all, does not permit AB 5207’s intrusion into this uniquely federal function.
Kirsch writes:
If New Jersey objects to how the federal government carries out its detention operations, it should use its voice, through its nationally elected representatives and federal elections, to make its objection heard.
Enforcing AB 5207 against Plaintiff would close the last remaining facility in New Jersey to which ICE has access. The result of any one of New Jersey’s neighboring states passing a comparable law — let alone an ensuing domino effect to other states — would result in nothing short of chaos. Although reference to the federal government was conveniently omitted from AB 5207, the statute is a dagger aimed at the heart of the federal government’s immigration enforcement mission and operations. Congress’s assignment to the federal government the responsibilities to enforce the civil immigration laws, including, when necessary, through detention, renders AB 5207 unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause.
The decision is likely to impact various other blue states like California, Illinois, and New York, where Democrats have sought to similarly ban ICE from detaining illegal aliens.
The ultimate goal is to carry out a tenant of the “Abolish ICE” movement, which lobbies to eliminate all immigration detention in favor of open borders.
“Immigration is a federal concern, and the New Jersey law was a brazen attempt to interfere with the federal government’s constitutional role,” Wilcox said. “The court made the right call here.”
The case is CoreCivic v. Murphy, No. 3:23-cv-00967 in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
