(Updated) Officials in conservative N.J. county are baffled at their inclusion on ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ list

Update on May 31: At the direction of the White House, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has pulled its national list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that violated laws to shield undocumented immigrants because it included multiple errors across the nation, including pro-Trump counties in New Jersey like Warren and Cumberland. As of 10:43 p.m., the DHS website lists an error page where the list once was.

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a list yesterday of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that it says violate the law to shield undocumented immigrants, many of the New Jersey towns on the list were not a surprise. Jersey City and Newark, for example, are already being sued for allegedly interfering with immigration enforcement, and both have mayors running for governor on a platform that includes resisting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

But two jurisdictions on the list stick out from the rest: Cumberland and Warren Counties.

Both counties voted for Donald Trump last year – Warren County did so by more than 20 percentage points – and both have Republican-controlled boards of county commissioners that are hardly sympathetic to sanctuary cities. An official statement from Warren County’s government expressed “surprise” at the designation, citing the anti-sanctuary state bills the county commissioner board has passed in recent years.

“Warren County has always cooperated, and will continue to cooperate, with the DHS, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and all federal immigration laws,” the statement says. “County officials are looking into why Warren County was included on the DHS list.”

“The Warren County Correctional Facility has a good working relationship with the New Jersey Operations Bureau of Homeland Security,” the statement continues. “As recently as two weeks ago, the Warren County Corrections Department worked with ICE on the transfer of custody of a detainee to Homeland Security.”

It seems possible that the two counties’ inclusion on the list may be a case of mistaken identity. Both Warren and Cumberland are common names for counties around the country; five out of the nation’s fourteen Warren Counties and three out of eight Cumberland Counties are on the list.

In fact, Warren County, New Jersey isn’t the only county by that name to be objecting to its supposed “sanctuary” designation. The county sheriff in Warren County, Ohio, which is similarly conservative and Republican-controlled, has said that his county’s inclusion is “wrong” and that he’s reached out to the Trump administration to correct the record.

There’s one other New Jersey county on the list: South Jersey’s Burlington County, which is more liberal and has a Democratic-controlled commissioner board. But it’s still not clear what would have made DHS target it and not any of the state’s other large, blue counties.

The entire state of New Jersey is also put on notice by the list; Gov. Phil Murphy proclaimed New Jersey to be a “sanctuary state” early in his term, and his administration has since made moves to limit state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The issue of whether that stance should be strengthened or discontinued is a major dividing line in the state’s ongoing race for governor.

On a municipal level, eighteen towns are on the DHS’s “sanctuary” list, all of them Democratic-leaning: Asbury Park, Bloomfield, Camden, East Orange, Hoboken, Jersey City, Leonia, Linden, Maplewood, Montclair, Newark, North Bergen, Paterson, Plainfield, Prospect Park, South Orange, Trenton, and Union City.

Not all of those towns, though, are happy about the label either; North Bergen officials told the Associated Press yesterday that the township has never declared itself a sanctuary city.

In a statement yesterday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that the list was intended to “expose” politicians who did not comply with federal immigration directives and enforcement.

“These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” Noem said. “We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law. President Trump and I will always put the safety of the American people first. Sanctuary politicians are on notice: comply with federal law.”