Acting U.S. District Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba said she is launching an investigation into the state’s governor and attorney general for their reported refusal to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Habba, Trump’s one-time personal lawyer and spokesperson who was appointed as acting U.S. attorney March 24 after serving as White House counselor, dropped the bombshell Thursday on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. She claimed that the Gov. Phil Murphy and New Jersey state Attorney General Matthew Platkin urged state police not to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
“And unfortunately, I will announce on your show tonight, Sean, and I want it to be a warning for everybody that I have instructed my office today to open an investigation into Governor Murphy, to open an investigation into Attorney General Platkin, who was also instructed the state police not to assist any of our federal… agencies under that are under my direction…” she said.
It comes after the Democratic governor allegedly told his troopers to ignore thousands of arrest warrants listed on a federal database. Shore News Network reported that the directive came from both Murphy and Platkin.
The pair appear to be following the law rather than stymying ICE progress. In 2018, a landmark statewide policy designed to strengthen trust between New Jersey’s law enforcement officers and immigrants was enacted. The Immigrant Trust Directive ensures that victims and witnesses feel safe reporting crimes to local police without fear of deportation.
“That will no longer stand,” Habba told Hannity of Murphy and Platkin’s alleged directive. U.S. Attorney General “Pam Bondi has made it clear and so has our president that we are to take all criminals, violent criminals, and criminals [sic] out of this country and to completely enforce federal law.”
She continued: “And anybody who does get in that way in the way of what we are doing, which is not political, it is simply against crime, will be charged in the state of New Jersey for obstruction, for concealment. And I will come after hard.”
She then appeared to suggest that state officers should act on her orders, not on the directives of their state officials. Citing Title 8 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which covers “Aliens and Nationality,” she said: “And let me tell you, to my state officers in New Jersey, some of whom I met with today, I appreciate and respect what you can and cannot do. They don’t have Title 8 authority. I understand that.”
She added: “But what they have been instructed to do by the AG and the governor as is on their website, is to not even make the phone call to ICE when they run the record and see there is a valid warrant and administrative warrant ordering deportation. That is putting the people in my state in jeopardy.”
“And if you did commit a crime, if you ordered obstruction, if you are ordering concealment and harboring, you will be charged,” Habba continued.
The Daily Beast has contact Murphy and Platkin for comment.
