New Jersey lawmakers have added some the state's trademark in-your-face attitude to a measure that would expand residents' ability to sue federal immigration officials.
Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey are using their legislative majorities to try to expand protections for the state's sizable immigrant population in sweeping ways.
One measure that is expected to come up for a vote in the State House on Monday would bar law enforcement officers, including federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, from wearing masks. Another would impose a 50 percent tax on privately run migrant detention centers. There are also calls for the state to divest from a tech company that sells a product that can help the police and military officials search digital data to locate people.
And two new Democratic members of the State Assembly have injected the conversation with a dose of in-your-face Jersey attitude, introducing a bill on Thursday that is encoded with an unsubtle message.
Named the Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered act, the legislation, known by its blunt acronym, would expand residents' rights under state law to sue immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct.
"There have to be real consequences if ICE breaks the law," said Katie Brennan, an Assembly Democrat from Jersey City who is sponsoring the bill with Ravi Bhalla, a former Hoboken mayor. Like Ms. Brennan, he was elected to the Assembly last year.
Raj Mukherji, a Democratic state senator who proposed similar legislation in November, said he expected to introduce a nearly identical measure in the Senate on Monday. Mr. Mukherji, a former deputy Assembly speaker, said he was hopeful of passage, noting that courts had upheld states' authority to reinforce federal civil rights protections.
The sponsors said that the bill's attention-grabbing name should not obscure its serious intent.
A similar effort in Illinois, adopted with a far less flamboyant title, has encountered legal challenges by the Trump administration. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, did not comment on the New Jersey measure.
New Jersey has emerged as a hub of immigration activism in the past year partly because of a large, privately run jail in Newark with a contract to hold up to 1,000 migrants at a time. Two prominent Democrats, Ras J. Baraka, Newark's mayor, and Representative LaMonica McIver, were criminally charged after a brief but volatile clash with immigration agents outside the center.
A trespassing charge against Mr. Baraka was dropped, but weeks later, his concerns about building code violations proved prescient when four men escaped through a flimsy wall at the center, known as Delaney Hall. The case against Ms. McIver, who is charged with assault, is moving toward trial.
Activists and faith leaders have continued a near-daily protest outside the center.
New Jersey has the country's second-largest percentage of immigrants, after California. Immigration arrests have increased steadily during President Trump's second term. Detentions in New Jersey peaked in August when about 850 migrants were arrested, up from 280 in the same month in 2024, according to the Immigration Enforcement Dashboard, which compiles publicly available national data.
Concern about the tactics employed by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement flared this month in Hudson County, N.J., where a large number of residents were born outside the United States. A Jersey City councilman, Jake Ephros, was recording an enforcement action by ICE agents and tried to ask questions, only to be dismissed.
"We don't need a warrant, bro," an agent told Mr. Ephros in a video shared widely on social media. "Stop getting that in your head."
New Jersey residents already have limited ways to challenge federal enforcement actions under the New Jersey Civil Rights Act.
Henal Patel, the legal affairs director for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, an advocacy group, said she was confident the bill that would make it easier to file lawsuits could be crafted to withstand court challenges.
As for the title of the measure, she said she found it fitting for a state that does not "buy into Puritanical language issues."
"It not only gets attention," she said. "It captures a little bit of the way a lot of people are feeling."
Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, focused heavily on immigration issues in her first month in office. She signed an executive order that bars ICE officials from staging enforcement actions on state property and has asked residents to upload videos of their encounters with immigration agents to an online portal.
Asked about the newly introduced Assembly bill, Sean Higgins, a spokesman for Ms. Sherrill, said the governor did not comment on pending legislation.
Democrats hold a sizable majority in the Assembly and Senate, leaving Republicans few opportunities to block legislation.
But Assemblyman Paul Kanitra, a Republican and former mayor of Point Pleasant Beach, planned to lead a protest outside the State House on Monday to oppose three immigrant-related bills, including the mask ban, that could reach a vote that afternoon.
The other two bills revive initiatives vetoed last month by Gov. Philip D. Murphy as he left office. One would convert a state directive that limits the amount of voluntary assistance local officers can give federal immigration agents into a law. The other aims to curb the amount of personal data held by health care facilities and government agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Mr. Kanitra said he was concerned that "we appear to have gone from a society that peacefully protested, to one that now actively wants to interfere physically with law enforcement."
Noting that the full text of the Assembly bill had not been published as of Friday afternoon, Mr. Kanitra said he was unfamiliar with the details of the legislation but called its title vulgar.
"At its core, once you take away their attempt to sensationalize things," he said,"it appears to be just another generic,pandering attempt by Democrats to toothlessly show that they're against President Trump,"
"and that they stand with illegal immigrants more than they do the legal citizens of New Jersey."