Judge blocks Trump from withholding funds from sanctuary cities

REUTERS/LEAH MILLIS/FILE PHOTO

President Donald Trump looks on as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

A federal judge in San Francisco today blocked Donald Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the Republican president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction at the request of 16 cities and counties nationally, led by San Francisco, in a lawsuit filed in February arguing that the administration was unlawfully trying to force local officials to cooperate with federal immigration arrests.

Those jurisdictions include the cities of Minneapolis, New Haven, Portland, St. Paul, Santa Fe and Seattle. They argue that the administration is seeking to punish them for exercising their rights to limit the use of their resources for federal civil immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit challenged an executive order Trump signed that threatened to cut off federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions that limit or refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During his first term as president, Trump in 2017 signed a similar executive order targeting sanctuary jurisdictions. San Francisco sued then too, leading Orrick to block the policy in a ruling that was upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Here we are again,” Orrick, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, wrote today.

Orrick said a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s latest executive order was likewise warranted as the local jurisdictions had established that Trump’s order likely unconstitutionally imposed conditions on federal funding without congressional authorization and ran afoul of the localities’ due process rights. The localities sued a day after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, seeking a court order blocking so-called sanctuary laws that the Democratic-led jurisdictions adopted, which it said were interfering with Trump’s agenda.

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Sanctuary laws prevent state and local law enforcement from assisting federal civil immigration officers. The Justice Department has since then also filed a lawsuit challenging a New York law that bars the Democratic-led state from sharing vehicle and address information with federal immigration authorities.

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