In summary
The state’s top prosecutor, Xavier Becerra, and San Francisco City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, announced this morning that they are filing side-by-side lawsuits against the Trump administration—the goal is to protect federal funding for designated “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
Another day, another lawsuit over the federal government’s immigration policy.
This morning the state’s top prosecutor, Xavier Becerra, and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera announced that they are filing side-by-side law suits against the Trump administration, an effort to protect federal funding for designated “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
“It’s a low blow to our men and women who wear that badge for the federal government to threaten their crime fighting resources in order to force them to do the work of the federal government when it comes to immigration enforcement,” Becerra said at a San Francisco press conference this morning. “We’re in the public safety business; we’re not in the deportation business.”
These two lawsuits come as a response to an announcement from the federal Department of Justice last July that cities must cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to receive funding through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grant program. Specifically, cities must grant federal immigration authorities access to local detention facilities and give them 48 hours notice before the release of a suspected undocumented immigrant from local custody.
In a similar vein, Justice Department also sent letters earlier this month to the police chiefs of Stockton and San Bernardino, warning them that funding from a new federal grant program aimed at reducing violent crime could be made conditional on scrapping local sanctuary city policies.
California cities, counties, and state agencies receive over $28 million from the federal government in law enforcement grants.
Today’s announcement follows a similar bit of litigation filed by the City of Chicago earlier this month. In response to that lawsuit, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the administration refused to “simply give away grant dollars to city governments that proudly violate the rule of law and protect criminal aliens.”
“So it’s this simple: Comply with the law or forego taxpayer dollars,” Sessions said in a statement.
Because the Trump administration is attempting to place restrictions on police officers and sheriff’s deputies, opponents have argued that it amounts to the commandeering of state and local officers by the federal government, a violation of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
“Immigration enforcement is the federal government’s job,” Herrera said. “Our police and deputies are focused on fighting crime, not breaking up hardworking families.”
While Governor Brown has expressed some skepticism about Senate Bill 54, the so-called “sanctuary state” bill currently before the state Assembly, earlier this month on NBC’s Meet The Press he said that it might be more productive to “resolve this in a judicial form rather than in the rhetoric of politicians talking past one another.”
The battle between California and the Trump administration dates back to the first days of the administration. In late January, the president signed an executive order deeming designated sanctuary jurisdictions “not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes.” That order has since been successfully held up in court by cities, counties, and states across the country—including California and San Francisco.