WASHINGTON—Today, in an important victory, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a New Jersey law banning private contractors from operating federal alien detention centers in the state. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) had filed a brief in the case urging that result.
Both in New Jersey and around the country, the federal government relies on private contractors to house aliens who have violated federal law but have elected to stay in the country in detention while fighting their deportation.
In its brief, IRLI showed that the New Jersey law was preempted under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause because it intentionally interfered with the federal alien-detention contracting program, which immigration statutes expressly contemplate, and that no “presumption against preemption” applied because immigration is exclusively an area of federal concern.
IRLI also showed that the law discriminated against the federal government, in violation of the immunity doctrine, by allowing privately-run facilities that serve state purposes while banning those that serve federal purposes.
Today, in a well-reasoned opinion, the Third Circuit agreed, holding New Jersey’s law unconstitutional because it did not merely burden the federal government “incidentally”:
Sometimes, a state goes further, interfering directly with federal policy or “destroying” it through “hostile legislation.” McCulloch v. Maryland (Supreme Court, 1819). And when it crosses that line, it violates the Constitution.
New Jersey is on the wrong side of that line. It dislikes some of the federal government’s immigration tools, so it passed a law with the intent to forbid new contracts for civil immigration detention. That law interferes with the federal government’s core power to enforce immigration laws.
“With this ban, New Jersey aimed to cripple our nation’s immigration law enforcement, which relies so heavily on federal contractors to house detainees,” said Christopher J. Hajec, acting executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “The problem is, the very purpose of New Jersey’s law is what makes it unconstitutional. We are pleased the court saw just that, and struck down this ban as an infringement on federalism and the Constitution.”
The case is CoreCivic, Inc. v. Murphy, No. 23-2598 (Third Circuit).
