Jest setup with React native cannot use import statement outside of a module

Repo

I am trying to setup Jest in my Turborepo monorepo specifically in my UI package. I'm trying to setup Jest so I have a very basic test to see how it works:

Button.spec.tsx

import {describe, it, expect} from "@jest/globals";
import {render} from "@testing-library/react-native";
import Button from "./Button.tsx";
import React from "react";

describe("Button", () => {
  it("renders the button with text", () => {
    expect(true).toBe(true);
    render(<Button>Click me</Button>);
  });
});

However, the test fails with a long error. Here is the important part:

    <monorepoRoot>/node_modules/.pnpm/[email protected]_@[email protected]_@[email protected][email protected]/node_modules/react-native/index.js:28
    
    import typeof * as ReactNativePublicAPI from './index.js.flow';
    ^^^^^^

    SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

      1 | import {describe, it, expect} from "@jest/globals";
    > 2 | import {render} from "@testing-library/react-native";
        | ^
      3 | import Button from "./Button.tsx";
      4 | import React from "react";
      5 |

I have tried a lot to fix this error and feel like I have hit wall this. Here is everything:

• I have tried creating my config from scratch with the jest cli
• Using the react-native preset
• Using the jsWithBabelPreset transform
• Using ts-jest with transforms
• Using ts-jest config helper, see here
• Using module file extensions
• Using babel instead and in addition to ts-jest
• Using babel's module:metro-react-native-babel-preset
• Using babel-plugin-strip-flow-types
• Using babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs
• Using experimental-vm-modules
• Transforming all of node_modules which only led to new errors

Here is my current config files:

babel.config.js

/** @type {import('@babel/core').ConfigFunction} */
export default {
  presets: ["module:metro-react-native-babel-preset"],
  plugins: [
    "@babel/plugin-transform-flow-strip-types",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-modules-commonjs",
  ],
};

jest.config.ts

import type {Config} from "jest";
import {createJsWithBabelPreset} from "ts-jest";

const jsWithBabelPreset = createJsWithBabelPreset({
  tsconfig: "tsconfig.json",
  babelConfig: true,
});

const jestConfig: Config = {
  preset: "react-native",
  transform: jsWithBabelPreset.transform,
  transformIgnorePatterns: [
    "/node_modules/(?!(@react-native|react-native)/).*/",
  ],
  moduleFileExtensions: ["ts", "tsx", "js", "flow"],
};

export default jestConfig;

tsconfig.json

{
  "extends": "../typescript-config/react-library.json",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "jsx": "react",
    "module": "NodeNext",
    "moduleResolution": "NodeNext",
    "target": "ESNext",
    "esModuleInterop": true,
    "allowImportingTsExtensions": true,
    "allowJs": true
  }
}

tsconfig.json (base)

{
  "$schema": "https://json.schemastore.org/tsconfig",
  "extends": "@react-native/typescript-config",
  "compilerOptions": {
    "jsx": "react-jsx",
    "allowImportingTsExtensions": true,
    "noEmit": true
  }
}

Test command

node --experimental-vm-modules node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js

I suspect the issue is with React native shipping flow code into the bundle but I do not know how to fix it. Here are my Jest related dependencies:

    "@testing-library/react-native": "^12.9.0",
    "babel-jest": "^30.0.1",
    "jest": "^30.0.0",
    "metro-react-native-babel-preset": "^0.77.0",
    "ts-jest": "^29.4.0",
    "@babel/core": "catalog:",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-flow-strip-types": "^7.27.1",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-private-methods": "^7.27.1",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-private-property-in-object": "^7.27.1",
    "@babel/plugin-transform-react-jsx": "^7.27.1",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.27.2",
    "@babel/preset-react": "^7.27.1",
    "@jest/globals": "^30.0.0",

As far as I am aware these are the latest versions:

System specs:

• Node v23.4.0
• macOS 15.5
• pnpm 10.12.1
• turbo 2.5.4

What should I do to fix this.

P.S. I have already had to patch a react native package shipping flow code in a .js extension.