New Jersey can't ban ICE detention center contracts, federal appeals court says

Abraham Gutman, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Jul 22, 2025

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A New Jersey law that prohibits contracts for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers is unconstitutional because it regulates the federal government, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals majority opinion found that New Jersey passed a law that “interferes with the federal government’s core power to enforce immigration law” simply because the state “dislikes some of the federal government’s immigration tools.”

Even though state and federal law often overlap, a state can’t cross the line and regulate how the federal government does its business.

“And when it crosses that line, it violates the Constitution,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote. “New Jersey is on the wrong side of that line.”

The 2-1 ruling is a win for the private prison company that filed the lawsuit, CoreCivic. The company operates the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Elizabeth, which until recently was the state’s only immigration detention facility.

In May, President Donald Trump‘s administration opened a 1,000-bed detention center in Newark, which is operated by The GEO Group, a private company that received a 15-year, $1 billion contract. Detentions soared following the facility’s establishment.

The administration has ramped up immigration enforcement actions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as part of its effort to reach a million deportees by year’s end.

Ryan Gustin, CivicCore’s senior director of public affairs, said in a statement that the company appreciates the court’s ruling.

“For more than 40 years, CoreCivic has played a limited but important role in America’s immigration system, which we have done for every administration — Democrat and Republican, including more than 25 years at Elizabeth Detention Center,“ Gustin said.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said in a statement that he was disappointed with the ruling and considering the next steps.

“Entrusting detention to for-profit companies poses grave risks to health and safety,” Platkin said.

In 2023, CoreCivic sought to renew its federal contract but was blocked by a law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy two years prior that barred public and private entities from entering into contracts for the purpose of immigration detention. The company sued and has continued to operate the facility throughout the litigation.

New Jersey argued throughout the litigation that its ban doesn’t regulate the federal government because it imposes a restriction on companies, who can’t sell their services, not ICE. It further argued that the law doesn’t discriminate against the federal government because New Jersey also prohibits its own Department of Corrections to contract with private companies to operate prisons.

But Bibas, a former University of Pennsylvania law professor who was appointed by Trump to the appeals court in 2017, wrote in the majority opinion that the law effectively imposes a ban on the federal government.

The prohibition on private companies “carries the same sting as a law whose text applies expressly to the federal government,” Bibas wrote.

The federal government intervened in the case and argued for the importance of the Elizabeth facility, which is located between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.

Judge Thomas Ambro, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, wrote a dissent arguing that the New Jersey law doesn’t obstruct any federal statute.

“If (Congress) wants the Federal Government to retain the ability to contract with private companies, it may pass legislation saying so,” Ambro wrote.

Immigration advocacy groups and activists demonstrated in May outside the Philadelphia federal court building on Market Street as the Third Circuit panel heard arguments in the case.

Following the ruling, Nedia Morsy, director of Make the Road NJ, said in a statement that the ruling “gives the Trump administration the green light to carry on their mass deportation agenda here in the Garden State.”

“Allowing corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group — just miles away from two international airports — to operate with impunity, with little transparency or accountability, this decision makes New Jersey the epicenter of family separation, kidnapping, and the disappearance of our loved ones, and continues to destabilize our communities,” Morsy said.

Other groups, including ACLU-NJ and New Jersey Alliance for Immigration Justice, expressed dismay with the ruling.

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