US Attorney Alina Habba Targets NJ Governor Over Immigration

(Bloomberg) — Alina Habba, the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, is investigating state Governor Phil Murphy for allegedly setting a statewide policy to limit cooperation with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

Habba, the interim US attorney, said Thursday night on Fox News that she was targeting Murphy and his attorney general, Matthew Platkin, for impeding the president’s planned deportations. 

“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 said. 

Habba’s threat escalated a showdown with Murphy that included her social media post this week on a report that state police officers had been ordered not to act on tens of thousands of immigration warrants in a federal database. She wrote: “Let me be clear: Executive Orders will be followed and enforced in the State of New Jersey.”

A spokesman for Murphy pointed to comments the governor made on a podcast where he said that immigration status won’t drive law-enforcement decisions.

“We go after criminals hard, period full stop, regardless of their immigration status,” Murphy said Friday on the Meidas Touch podcast. “What we don’t do is, we don’t go after somebody for jay walking, where there’s no probable cause of a crime.”

He also said “If you’re a criminal in New Jersey we’re coming after you, and if there’s an immigration angle to that, we’ll work with the feds for sure.”

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