The Department of Justice is now suing four New Jersey cities, including Newark, over their sanctuary policies for illegal aliens.
A new lawsuit claims officials in Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Hoboken have been violating the Constitution by blocking federal agents in their attempts to apprehend illegal aliens.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth wrote in the complaint that the cities’ sanctuary policies amounted to “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws and the federal authorities that administer them.”
“The express purpose and clear effect of these policies… is to thwart federal immigration enforcement,” Roth said.
“Even where local law enforcement wants to help the United States deal with the nation’s immigration crisis, the Challenged Policies impede them from doing so.”
The complaint goes on to state that the policies put government employees and local communities at risk, and violate the Constitution’s supremacy clause.
The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was recently involved in a high-profile incident at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Newark, which led to his arrest and to federal charges against Democrat Rep. LaMonica McIver.
Baraka joined a number of Democrat lawmakers at the Delaney Hall facility to protest its reopening.
Baraka called the lawsuit “absurd.”
We are not standing in the way of public safety,” he said.
“We are upholding the Constitution, providing oversight, and following the laws and guidelines of the State of New Jersey. Nothing in our policies prevents law enforcement from doing their jobs. What we refuse to do is turn our city into an arm of federal immigration enforcement, which the courts have already ruled is not our role.”
The DoJ has already filed similar lawsuits against New York, and the states of Illinois and Colorado.
There are around 220 sanctuary jurisdictions in the US today.
Sanctuary jurisdictions, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration operations, were a major target during President Trump’s first term. He signed an executive order to withdraw federal grants from jurisdictions based on their immigration policies. In 2018, that order was blocked, before the block was overturned in 2020.
During the 2024 election campaign, President Trump promised that he would abolish sanctuary jurisdictions if elected.
Attorney General Pam Bondi targeted these jurisdictions immediately upon her confirmation, ordering federal funding to them to be paused and a full investigation of all funding agreements these jurisdictions have with NGOs that offer assistance to illegal aliens. She has also launched a number of lawsuits against sanctuary cities, including Chicago and New York.
At the end of March, Border Czar Tom Homan led a series of raids in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts, arresting nearly 400 illegal aliens, the majority of whom were criminals.