Judge Georgette Castner ends the Justice Department's challenge to Executive Order 12 with prejudice; Judge Brian Martinotti gives Newark's mayor 21 days to refile his suit over the Delaney Hall arrest.
Two federal judges in Newark filed two opinions on Friday, September 4. Judge Georgette Castner threw out the Trump administration's lawsuit against Executive Order 12, the order sharply limiting ICE's use of state property. Judge Brian Martinotti threw out Mayor Ras Baraka's lawsuit over his arrest at Delaney Hall, handing him twenty-one days to try again. Washington lost its offensive case. Newark lost its defensive one.
Both are marked "not for publication," meaning they bind no other court.
Castner's case opened on February 23, when the Justice Department sued Governor Mikie Sherrill over an order she had signed twelve days earlier. Executive Order 12 bars federal immigration officers from nonpublic areas of state property — courthouses, agency offices, parking garages — unless they carry a judicial warrant. It also blocks them from using state property as a staging ground for civil immigration enforcement. The department's complaint raised three Supremacy Clause counts: preemption, unlawful regulation of the federal government, and discrimination against it.
The government cleared standing, accepting the argument that forcing ICE agents out of courthouse nonpublic areas could expose officers to more dangerous encounters. Castner also pointed to the state's own enforcement posture — Sherrill built an online portal for residents to report interactions with federal immigration agents — as proof the order bites. On the merits, the complaint lost three ways. Preemption failed first — the order withholds state help, full stop. The regulation count died on the proprietor distinction: New Jersey manages its own buildings, it doesn't police federal conduct. Discrimination never got off the ground — nobody else enforces civil immigration law, so nobody stands in ICE's shoes.
"Congress contemplated state assistance in federal immigration enforcement, but it contemplated that assistance on a voluntary basis," Castner wrote. "The fact that New Jersey has decided not to volunteer—in the limited context of EO12—is in accordance, not in conflict, with Congress's design."
Any reading that made state cooperation mandatory would collide with the Tenth Amendment's bar on commandeering state governments. On the obstruction point she borrowed from a Ninth Circuit ruling: "Refusing to help is not the same as impeding." The ACLU of New Jersey and nineteen community organizations weighed in for the order; the Federation for American Immigration Reform weighed in against it.
The winners spoke the same day. "All New Jerseyans deserve to feel safe when they enter state-owned property, and New Jersey has the authority to ensure that safety," said Jeanne LoCicero, legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey. "This ruling protects the trust our communities depend on," said Pooja Chaudhuri, deputy legal director and senior counsel at the Democracy Defenders Fund. Their side of the courtroom leaves with a live order and a press release.
Baraka's case began months earlier, with an arrest. Federal agents arrested the Newark mayor on May 9, 2025, outside Delaney Hall, the GEO Group-owned detention center that houses ICE detainees. According to the second amended complaint, a GEO security guard invited Baraka inside the fence to calm the crowd, a Homeland Security Investigations official told him to leave, and roughly twenty armed agents took him down anyway, five minutes after he left GEO property. Prosecutors charged trespass under the Assimilative Crimes Act. Habba's office moved to dismiss the charge ten days later, and U.S. Magistrate Judge André Espinosa threw out the charge on May 21, twelve days after the arrest, while warning the U.S. Attorney's Office about its rush to act.
The mayor sued anyway, filing on June 3, 2025 against Habba, then serving as interim U.S. Attorney, and Special Agent in Charge Ricky Patel. A second amended complaint followed, along with an attempt to add the City of Newark itself as a plaintiff. Friday, all four counts failed. The opinion states that the defamation and false light claims ran into a jurisdictional wall — they belong, if anywhere, against the United States: Justice Department officials certified that Habba spoke within the scope of her employment, converting her personal exposure into a Federal Tort Claims Act matter, and Baraka filed his administrative tort claim only after suing, a sequence the law treats as fatal. The act bars defamation suits against the government outright.
Martinotti rejected the constitutional claims on different grounds. Since Bivens v. Six Unknown Federal Narcotics Agents, the Supreme Court has treated damages suits against federal officers as a disfavored judicial invention, and lower courts have learned to refuse extensions. Martinotti counted a federal prosecutor and an HSI chief as new categories of defendants and noted that Congress built alternative remedies — the Hyde Amendment's fee-shifting and 28 U.S.C. §1495's compensation fund — even though Baraka, never convicted, cannot use §1495 himself. The City of Newark cannot ride along either; the city skipped the administrative tort claim route, and municipalities get no Bivens claims at all.
Martinotti did not pretend the record was pretty. "Baraka has listed a litany of facts that are, candidly, concerning," the opinion acknowledges. Of Habba's post-arrest statements, the opinion adds: they were "ultimately unfounded, as evidenced by the United States of America's proposed order for dismissal of the charges brought against Baraka." Neither observation rescued a single count.
Espinosa delivered the rebuke at the May 21 hearing: "The apparent rush in this case, culminating today in the embarrassing retraction of charges, suggests a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts, and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power." The rebuke has no legal force in the civil case; Martinotti's opinion cites the episode as background.
The ruling leaves Habba personally untouched. Her interim appointment ended July 24, 2025. The Third Circuit rejected the administration's bid to keep her in the job that December, and she stepped down days later. Baraka has twenty-one days to file a third amended complaint. The court flagged its own doubt: it has "reservations regarding Baraka's ability to allege facts that would survive a motion to dismiss."
Delaney Hall sits outside both rulings. Executive Order 12 governs state property, and the detention center belongs to GEO Group under federal contract, so Castner's decision changes nothing at the Newark facility. Martinotti's decision changes nothing there either; the mayor's remaining paths run through a third complaint or a federal tort claim. The administration's case cannot come back — Castner dismissed it with prejudice and closed the file, its only road back running through an appeals court. Baraka's twenty-one days run out September 25.
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Sources
• ACLU of New Jersey, "In a Victory for Immigrants' Rights, District Court Dismisses DOJ's Challenge to Gov. Sherrill's EO Limiting Use of State Property for Federal Civil Immigration Enforcement," Press Release (September 4, 2026)
• The Associated Press, "Alina Habba resigns as New Jersey federal prosecutor amid court ruling" (December 8, 2025)
• Baraka v. Habba et al., U.S. District Court (D.N.J.), Docket No. 2:25-cv-06846, Opinion, Document No. 36 (September 4, 2026)
• NBC News, "Appeals court upholds ruling that disqualified Alina Habba from serving as New Jersey's top prosecutor" (December 1, 2025)
• United States v. New Jersey, U.S. District Court (D.N.J.), Docket No. 3:26-cv-01770, Opinion, Document No. 34 (September 4, 2026)
• United States v. New Jersey, U.S. District Court (D.N.J.), Docket No. 3:26-cv-01770, Order, Document No. 35 (September 4, 2026)