Mikie Sherrill supports enshrining NJ’s existing sanctuary policy into law as immigrant rights groups push for an expanded version

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill supports cementing the state’s sanctuary state policy into law — as it’s already written.

The Immigrant Trust Directive, commonly called a sanctuary policy, restricts state law enforcement from cooperating with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Enshrining the policy into law would ensure future governors of either party couldn’t unilaterally take it away. As of now, the directive could be undone with a flick of a pen.

Immigrant rights groups in New Jersey have pushed for several years to make the policy permanent with a new law, a need they say is increasingly urgent amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which has reverberated across the country. But those activists want to expand protections, which could clash with Sherrill’s approach.

“Gov. Sherrill supports a bill to codify the directive,” her spokesperson Sean Higgins said. “What she does not support is anything that undermines the ability to defend our protections in court, which puts people at risk.”

Sherrill has argued that making changes to the directive while making it law could invite new lawsuits and risk the whole policy, which was enacted during Trump’s first presidency and has survived federal judges appointed by both Trump and former President George W. Bush.

“New Jersey’s directive has already withstood judicial review — and that additional action, if not precise, could undo important protections which we cannot risk under the Trump administration,” Sherrill said during her primary campaign.

Higgins said those concerns “have not changed.”

Immigrant rights groups nearly reached the finish line late last year after the state legislature passed a bill that included some of the changes they wanted to make.

But former Gov. Phil Murphy rejected the bill in his final hours in office. He made the same argument as Sherrill that the policy could be in danger altogether if it changes and invites new lawsuits.

» READ MORE: New Jersey's sanctuary state status explained, and how it was at risk in the governor's race

Amol Sinha, the executive director of ACLU New Jersey, argued that the directive’s survival of the courts is all the more reason to make it law because of the precedent it set.

He said the changes in the bill that reached Murphy’s desk wouldn’t impact the actual legal matters at hand, which were about whether federal law preempts the state’s immigration policy and the state being able to decide where its resources go.

The bill Murphy vetoed — which Democratic lawmakers have already signaled they’ll reintroduce in the new session — would remove an exception for law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities on final orders of removal and prohibit law enforcement from providing money to federal immigration authorities.

“We cannot be in a situation where we’re constantly afraid of lawsuits and therefore we don’t pass any laws,” Sinha said. “There is legal risk to every law that passes in New Jersey. You’re going to get sued, and if you don’t want to get sued then you shouldn’t be in government.”

Sherrill’s stance on the matter has, at times, been ambiguous.

After a general election debate in late September, she said she is “going to focus on following the law and the Constitution” when pressed by reporters for a straight answer on whether she would keep the directive in place. In October, she said she supported aspects of the policy but also suggested she wanted to revisit it.

During the primary contest, her spokesperson said Trump “is changing the rules rapidly” and Sherrill would “address the circumstances as they exist,” but she had also signaled support for keeping the policy.

Since taking office last week, Sherrill has taken other steps to try to shield the state from ICE. She announced Thursday that her administration plans to launch a state database for New Jerseyans to upload videos of ICE operations in the state, following two fatal shootings in Minnesota.

But the pressure to work with legislators on making the sanctuary directive law remains.

Assemblymember Balvir Singh, a Burlington County Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill Murphy rejected, said part of the urgency is concern over Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from Democratic-led states over policy disagreements.

Even though Sherrill has kept the directive in place, a policy that can be changed with the stroke of a pen carries different weight than a statute backed by two branches of government.

“Our executive can be put under a tremendous amount of pressure where they have to figure out how they’re going to fund our social services systems that rely on federal funding,” Singh said.

Just last week, Trump directed federal government agencies to review funding for several Democratic states, including New Jersey, almost all of which were on a list of sanctuary jurisictions produced by his administration.

The one exception was Virginia, where the new Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger rescinded a directive that instructed law enforcement to work with ICE. The week prior, Trump said he planned to cut off federal funding for states with sanctuary cities.

Singh, whose district includes various immigrant communities, said preserving the seven-year-old policy through law is “the very minimum.”

Sherrill declined to comment on the specifics of the bill that reached Murphy’s desk, and the question will be whether lawmakers can get away with any changes to the current directive or if she’ll only sign a carbon copy of what already exists.

The sanctuary bill was one of three pieces of legislation aimed at protecting immigrants that Murphy weighed in his final days in office. He signed one about creating model policies for safe spaces in the state and vetoed another aimed at protecting data, citing a “drafting oversight.”

As she waited anxiously for Murphy’s decisions on the bills earlier this month, Nedia Morsy, the executive director of immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, argued that New Jersey shouldn’t “make policy based on fear” and said immigrants in the state were experiencing a “collective feeling of suffocation.”

She slammed Murphy’s vetoes, saying legal experts had already vetted the bills.

Sherrill has repeatedly promised to fight Trump and recently stated that ICE agents are “occupying cities, inciting violence, and violating the Constitution” and need to be held accountable “for their lawless actions.”

» READ MORE: Mikie Sherrill takes oath as New Jersey governor, becoming the second woman to lead the state

Her fiery rhetoric has given some activists hope that she’ll be willing to work with them.

And while there isn’t one bill that can stop ICE from sweeping New Jersey communities, the state can “put up safeguards and guardrails,” through policies like the ones Murphy rejected, Sinha said.

“I take Gov. Sherrill at her word that she wants to push back against authoritarianism, and to me, that means doing whatever we can to protect immigrants in our state,” he added.