President Donald Trump’s longtime legal counsel and appointee as U.S. attorney for New Jersey announced Thursday she will launch a probe into Gov. Phil Murphy and Attorney General Matt Platkin over reports that state police were asked to ignore new immigration warrants.
Alina Habba said on “Hannity” she decided to launch the probe following a Shore News Network report that an internal memo from New Jersey State Police (NJSP) Col. Patrick Callahan revealed Murphy and Platkin ordered that officers not pursue thousands of immigration warrants recently added to the National Crime Information Center.
The move was reportedly meant to be in line with former Attorney General Gurbir Grewal’s 2018 “Immigration Trust Directive,” which limited the types of voluntary assistance state and local police could offer the feds.
“We know that the governor has on his website, currently, dos and don’ts for his local state of law enforcement. Those dos and don’ts instruct them not to cooperate with illegal immigrants who have administrative warrants that have been issued by the court after due process,” Habba said.
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“It is instructing them to go against our federal rules, our executive orders.”
She said her new probe into Murphy and Platkin should be a warning to all other state leaders that if they hinder the FBI, DEA or other federal law enforcement agencies, they will be held accountable.
“[W]e are to take all criminal, violent criminals and criminals out of this country and to completely enforce federal law. And anybody who does get 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 them hard.”
Habba, whose office is based in Newark, said she met with state law enforcement on Thursday and noted they do not have the same authority as federal officers, but they can still legally notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hand off or alert them to immigration-related investigations.
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“If anybody wants to use politics or their position to go and violate any federal law or any executive order in this state, and that includes sanctuary cities, and I’m looking at you in Paterson – I will be investigating you, and if you did commit a crime, if you ordered obstruction, if you are ordering concealment and harboring, you will be charged.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Murphy, Platkin and Paterson, New Jersey, Democratic Mayor Andre Sayegh for comment.
Sayegh recently made waves politically last month, when he declared Paterson the American “capital of Palestine.” The city has a large Muslim and Arabic population.
Murphy recently suggested he was housing a migrant at his Monmouth County home and went on to dare Trump to do something about it.
In February, he said he and New Jersey first lady Tammy Murphy were talking about “someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to.”
“And we said, you know what? Let’s have her live at our house above our garage,” Murphy said.
“Good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.”
Fox News Digital reached out to NJSP for more information on the memo and its actions in regard to Murphy’s order.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman and Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report.
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