In a final, defining act of political cowardice, outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy pocket vetoed a trio of landmark immigrant protection bills, delivering a profound betrayal to advocates and vulnerable families and cementing a legacy where his professed ideals consistently buckled under pressure.
The governor’s silent killing of the legislation—via pocket veto—came despite furious, last-minute pleas from a national coalition of over 200 faith leaders who framed the decision as a moral test.
The proposed laws sought to limit New Jersey’s entanglement with federal deportation efforts, measures that took on searing urgency following the deaths of New Jersey residents Jean Wilson Brutus and Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz in immigration detention, and the killing of legal observer Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
“This is what authoritarianism looks like in plain sight,” the faith leaders warned Murphy in a letter on Jan. 19, arguing that fear had become policy in New Jersey communities. By refusing to act, the governor chose complicity over courage, they said, abandoning residents to a system that treats human beings as disposable.
The veto marks a stark endpoint to a governorship built on a cultivated image of progressive humanitarianism—an image that has repeatedly crumbled under scrutiny.
As a former board member with the national NAACP, Murphy might have been expected to deliver substantive results, but he has instead only exploited such groups for political support while abandoning their greatest priorities.
Beyond the immigrant protections, Murphy’s administration has actively opposed and stalled concrete efforts to dismantle one of the most severe systems of racial segregation in America: New Jersey’s own public schools.
Despite a state constitutional ban on segregation and the unequivocal federal ruling in Brown v. Board of Education seven decades ago, New Jersey’s schools remain among the nation’s most racially divided.
This segregation stems from long-standing housing trends and a mix of hyper-local school districts.
For years, Murphy’s administration fought against a major lawsuit, Latino Action Network v. New Jersey, which seeks to force the state to remedy this unconstitutional reality.
Plaintiffs have accused the administration of deliberate delay, kicking the complex and costly problem to the next governor.
This pattern—rhetorical commitment to justice paired with tangible obstruction—has defined Murphy’s tenure. He is a multi-millionaire former financier and diplomat whose political brand promised a stark contrast to the chaos of the previous national administration.
Yet, in critical moments, his actions have revealed a leader more comfortable with symbolism than substance, allergic to the difficult fights required to align the state with its proclaimed values.
The immigrant bills had broad support from the Democratic-controlled legislature and advocates who saw them as a necessary firewall against federal overreach.
Their death on Murphy’s desk is not an oversight but a conscious decision. It reflects a governor who, when faced with a choice between protecting marginalized communities and avoiding political risk, consistently chooses the latter.
The assessment from his peers appears damning. In an informal ranking by former state officials reported this week, Murphy placed dead last among modern New Jersey governors, behind even figures felled by scandal.
As he exits, Murphy leaves a trail of unfinished justice.
He leaves a school system legally separate and unequal, a status his administration defended in court.
He leaves immigrant families more exposed to a machinery of detention and deportation, which he called cruel but refused to meaningfully impede.
He signed bills on plastic forks and invasive species while allowing fundamental protections to die, like the growing list of dead people, including New Jersey residents Jean Wilson Brutus and Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, who died in the cruel detention-and-deportation machine, and Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by one of Trump’s Gestapo-like ICE agents in Minneapolis.
The final betrayal was not in the bills he vetoed, but in the vivid exposure of the gap between the man he purported to be and the leader he proved to be. The humanitarian image was a carefully maintained fiction. The record is one of profound failure.