Advocates Say Murphy’s Final-Hour Veto Leaves New Jersey Immigrant Communities At Risk

Just hours before leaving office, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) allowed two out of three major immigrant-protection bills to die without his signature, using a pocket veto that disappointed advocates who had spent years pushing for the measures.

Murphy signed only the Safe Communities Act (A6308/S5036), which directs the state attorney general to write statewide “model policies” for how schools, hospitals, courts, shelters, and houses of worship should respond when federal immigration agents show up.​

But he declined to act on the two other bills in the package before the legislative session expired, effectively killing them for now. Immigrant-rights groups say that decision leaves families vulnerable at a moment when federal immigration enforcement has dramatically escalated.

“In failing to sign these bills, Governor Murphy has left New Jersey without critical protections at a moment when ICE is brutalizing our communities. These bills were legally sound, politically viable, and commonsense policy,” said Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, in a statement.

A moment of crisis

Immigrant-rights groups say ICE enforcement is becoming increasingly more dangerous, especially after agents fatally shot Renee Good in Minnesota earlier this month. And in New Jersey, raids and detentions have become routine.

Nearly one in four New Jersey residents is an immigrant. In the last year alone, ICE detention capacity in the state has quadrupled, Delaney Hall in Newark was reopened under a 15‑year contract with private prison operator GEO Group, and federal agents launched a string of workplace raids in Newark and other cities during Republican President Donald Trump’s second term.

In a coalition letter sent last week, 126 advocacy organizations warned Murphy that the federal government has “turbocharged ICE with $75 billion to expand immigration detention and enforcement” and that from January through October 2025, more than 6,000 New Jersey residents were detained in immigration custody as detention capacity in the state “more than quadrupled.” 

“This terror is felt deeply by families in New Jersey,” the groups wrote, urging him to sign all three bills.

The bill that would have codified the Immigrant Trust Directive

The highest-profile measure Murphy declined to sign was A6310/S5038, which would have codified the attorney general’s 2018 “Immigrant Trust Directive,” a policy that limits how local police work with ICE officials.

It has survived multiple challenges, including a 2020 lawsuit from Trump’s first-term Department of Justice. Murphy still decided to pocket veto this bill, saying in a statement that it would have opened the state up to “judicial scrutiny.”

“Re-opening the door to judicial scrutiny of our State’s immigration policies, combined with the Trump Administration’s increasingly targeted actions against states and cities, is a recipe for disaster for our immigrant brothers and sisters and puts them in greater danger,” said Murphy. “And that is not something I am willing to risk when the Directive is secure for the foreseeable future.”

Advocates spent years trying to codify and expand those protections through broader “Values Act” and “Immigrant Trust Act” proposals that stalled in Trenton. Those earlier bills would have sharply restricted when any state or local agency could collect or share immigration-related data, and they would have barred cooperation with ICE unless someone was convicted, not merely charged, with a crime.

As federal enforcement ramped up again in Trump’s second term, lawmakers broke that broader bill into three narrower measures: the Safe Communities Act, the Privacy Protection Act, and the law that would codify the Immigrant Trust Directive.

The final three bills themselves were a compromise between lawmakers and advocates. The Legislature did not go as far as earlier Immigrant Trust Act drafts that advocates had pushed, leaving some carve-outs that still allowed coordination in a narrower set of serious cases.

In a statement, Murphy said that the Privacy Protection Act included a “drafting oversight not previously discovered during the legislative process and the Governor’s consideration of the initial bill,” and suggested a language change for lawmakers to take up in the coming weeks

“As a result, the bill as written could be construed to conflict with federal law and, if signed, could jeopardize billions of dollars in federal funding for critical programs that serve the people of New Jersey,” said Murphy. “I deeply wish there was sufficient time left to correct this issue, but it is not possible due to the expiration of the legislative session.”

It is not yet clear what measures Gov.-elect Mikie Sherill (D) will take to pass these bills, if any at all. During her campaign, Sherrill said she supported the goals of the Immigrant Trust Directive and called it “a plan that’s working.” At the same time, she repeatedly raised concerns that codifying the policy through the broader version of the Immigrant Trust Act could open New Jersey to new legal challenges from the Trump administration.

Because the directive is only an attorney general policy, advocates fear it could be quietly watered down or rescinded by Sherrill’s future appointees, especially if the Trump administration continues suing states and cities that try to wall off local agencies from federal immigration enforcement.

“This is a betrayal to the thousands of immigrants, community leaders, and advocates who fought for the last year to keep us safe,” said Nedia Morsy, executive director of Make the Road New Jersey.

“We cannot wait for the perfect conditions or guarantees to pass these bills. We look forward to working with the incoming Sherrill administration to get these over the finish line and show that New Jersey is ready to stand up to the Trump administration,” Morsy continued.