General
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy came under fire Monday after appearing to say he was housing an undocumented immigrant in a garage above his home and daring federal officials in President Donald Trump’s administration to ”try to get her.”
But while Murphy’s office declined comment, a source familiar with the situation told NJ Advance Media the remarks were misinterpreted and the woman has never actually lived at his residence.
The unprompted remarks from Murphy, a Democrat in his final year running the state, came during a public interview Saturday at Montclair State University with left-leaning advocacy group Blue Wave New Jersey. The event was streamed on the governor’s social media.
It all comes as Trump has vowed to conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and his administration has threatened to punish officials who interfere. There has been an increase in ICE raids since Trump, a Republican, began his second term last month, including one at a fish market in Newark.
Murphy was asked during Saturday’s event how his administration will respond to Trump. In a later part of the conversation — during a question about transgender rights — he recounted a discussion he had with First Lady Tammy Murphy about housing someone, apparently at their Middletown home on the Navesink River.
“This isn’t a trans case, but Tammy and I were talking about — I don’t want to get into too much detail, but there’s someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point they are trying to get it to,” Murphy said. “And we said: You know what? Let’s have her live above our house above our garage. And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.”
“We cannot roll over, we cannot stop fighting,” he added moments later.
The comments went largely unnoticed until Monday, when right-leaning media outlets published stories about them.
But the source familiar with the situation — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — said Murphy was talking about “someone in his circle of friends who was concerned given all that’s going on,” even though that person has “legal status.”
Murphy, the source said, was simply saying he would have offered her a place at the house and that the remarks were “blown out” of proportion by conservative media.
“No one’s ever lived in the home,” the source said.
Tom Holman, Trump’s border czar, said in December that knowingly harboring undocumented immigrants from ICE is a “violation of the law.” In a memo last month, the U.S. Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors to investigate state or local officials who they believe are interfering with the Trump administration’s attempts to crack down on illegal immigration and said they could face criminal charges.
Republicans criticized Murphy on Monday before the source’s explanation.
”The governor thinks he’s above the law,” State Assemblyman Erik Peterson, R-Hunterdon, said in a statement.
Some Trump supporters suggested on social media that ICE should raid Murphy’s home or that he should resign or be prosecuted.
When he first ran in 2017, Murphy, an avowed progressive Democrat, said he was open to making New Jersey a “sanctuary state” for undocumented immigrants.
In 2019, then-state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, whom Murphy appointed, issued the Immigrant Trust Directive, which prohibits police officers, prosecutors, and corrections officers in New Jersey from participating in ICE’s civil immigration enforcement operations.
More recently, Murphy has been measured in his response to the ICE raids. Earlier in Saturday’s event, he was asked about people afraid of being deported and what the state can do.
“The formula is going to continue to be aggressive legal action, using the bully pulpit … and then having the right rules, constructs, executive orders,” Murphy said. “That tends to be the elements of the recipe.”
He then mentioned how the Immigrant Trust Directive has been “highly, highly effective,” and it has withstood a lot of federal judicial scrutiny.
“I almost feel like we’re keeping our head down here,” Murphy sad. “What we have in place has worked. Whatever we do, I don’t want to undo that.”
Murphy, who leaves office in January 2026, said in an interview with NJ Advance Media last month the state’s reaction to Trump’s immigration directives will depend on the situation.
“If they’re gonna target — apparently there’s over a million people, I believe this is throughout America, not in New Jersey — whose cases of asylum have already been adjudicated. These people have lost, but for whatever reason they’re still in the United States, if he goes after them, I don’t feel like I’m gonna be putting up a whole lot of resistance on that,” the governor said.
“If he goes after people who have committed a serious crime, who are awaiting adjudication, I don’t think there’s gonna be a lot of support in that lane either,” he added. “That’s very different from blunt-instrument mass deportation. Including very innocent individuals who escaped seeking asylum because they were being persecuted or physically threatened, or even worse yet, American citizens — that’s a problem.”
New Jersey is a left-leaning state that has one of the largest immigrant populations in the nation at 2.2 million, according to the Migration Policy Institute. About 475,000 of them entered the U.S. illegally, according to Pew Research Center estimates.
But immigration is also a tough topic for Democrats. Trump performed much better than expected in New Jersey in last year’s election, losing it by only 6 percentage points. A Rutgers-Eagleton poll last November found Garden State residents want tougher border security and a small majority favor mass deportation.
Murphy and Trump, meanwhile, have been both adversarial and friendly over the years. Murphy’s administration fought Trump’s policies on immigration, guns, and taxes in court during Trump’s first term. But they also collaborated on the government’s COVID-19 response and the Gateway Tunnel project.
During his latest State of the State address last month, Murphy said he will “never back away from partnering with the Trump administration where our priorities align.”
“But just as importantly, I will never back down from defending our New Jersey values — if and when they are tested,” the governor added.
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