Nolan lost to N.J. attorney general, who wouldn’t allow jailers to check with feds on inmate status
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
U.S. District Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by Cape May County Sheriff Robert Nolan and Ocean County officials who sued New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal over his order barring county officials from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The attorney general hailed the ruling that upheld his directive separating state law enforcement officers and federal customs officers, while Nolan and county officials criticized the ruling.
The Cape May County Sheriff’s Office had openly defied Grewal’s directive that stopped his office, which runs the Cape May County Jail, to access ICE databases on prisoners. That directive, 2018-6, known as the Immigration Trust Directive, prohibits local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE or taking part in the 287(g) agreement that allowed sheriff’s officers to check prisoners against ICE’s database.
The Sheriff’s Office entered the 287(g) agreement in 2017 under former Sheriff Gary Schaffer and Nolan continued it. Under the agreement, the sheriff had three trained officers who could check county prisoners against the ICE database to see if they were wanted for other crimes.
The Cape May County Board of Chosen Freeholders and sheriff are reviewing the ruling.
“This ruling actually violates the rights of every sheriff in the state to voluntarily assist fellow law-enforcement officers in keeping their communities safe,” Nolan said in a written statement released by the county. “Federal law specifically granted these rights to be used at the discretion of law enforcement executives to be utilized in the best interest for the communities that they protect. This ruling is shameful!”
“The Cape May County Freeholder Board fully supports Sheriff Nolan,” Cape May County Freeholder Director Gerald M. Thornton said in the statement. “As we move forward, the sheriff knows that we will assist in anyway possible to protect our residents in Cape May County.”
The county press release continued, “We are in consultation with our partners in Ocean County as well as the United States Attorney General’s office in reviewing the decision and given the critical public safety concerns for the people of Cape May County, considering an appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.”
“Today, the court recognized what we have said all along: New Jersey has the authority to draw a clear, bright line between the work of state law enforcement officers and federal civil immigration officers,” Grewal said on his office’s website. “This line is more important than ever, as we work hard every day to build and restore trust between New Jersey’s police officers and historically marginalized communities.
“In November 2018, I issued the Immigrant Trust Directive in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, flanked by our state’s law enforcement leaders. What I said then remains true today: you can be both pro-immigrant and pro-law enforcement. And, indeed, our directive is pro-law enforcement precisely because it is pro-immigrant. Today’s decision reaffirms that principle.”
Cape May County officials had claimed that their use of the ICE database helped protect the citizens of the county and that they only used it on individuals who were incarcerated in the jail. Nolan had pledged his officers would not assist ICE with arrests. “I was not going to allow them to go into homes and tear families apart. I was not going to allow them to go help with the arrests, identification of immigrants that are here whether documented or undocumented,” Nolan said last summer. The only time the system is used is when suspects enter the jail. The officers check to see if the suspects are wanted in other areas, he said.
“We notify ICE if they come up in the ICE system and ICE takes them,” Nolan said.
Last summer, Veronica Allende, director of the Division of Criminal Justice for the Attorney General’s Office According to Allende, explained that 287(g) agreements “blur this distinction” between local, state, county and federal authorities.
“By allowing county and local law enforcement officers to enforce federal civil immigration law, these agreements essentially deputize our state’s police officers to operate like ICE agents,” Allende wrote. “This blurring of responsibilities makes it more difficult for residents of New Jersey to understand how different law enforcement agencies operate, in turn undermining the hard-earned trust that New Jersey’s law enforcement officers have built with the public.”
The 53-page ruling was written by U.S. Chief District Judge Freda L. Wolfson and is available online at www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases20/Ocean-County_v_Grewal_Opinion.pdf.