San Franciso sues over sanctuary city order
City charges crackdown violates states’ rights
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, charging that its crackdown on sanctuary cities violates the states’ rights provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
The filing in federal court comes less than a week after President Donald Trump issued orders putting cities and counties on notice that they would lose federal funding if they did not start cooperating with immigration agents.
The move has broad implications for California, a state that aggressively protects immigrants who are in the country illegally from deportation.
San Francisco, one of 400 sanctuary cities and counties in the country, stands to lose more than $1.2 billion a year in federal funding, most of it for health care, nutrition and other programs for the poor, according to San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
“The president’s executive order is not only unconstitutional, it’s un-American,” Herrera said. “That is why we must stand up and oppose it. We are a nation of immigrants and a land of laws. We must be the ‘guardians of our democracy’ that President Obama urged us all to be in his farewell address.”
The cities Trump is targeting have many tools to strike back. Among the most potent are high court decisions that have interpreted financial threats such as the one Trump is now making as an unlawful intrusion on states’ rights.
Santa Fe is a sanctuary city and could be affected by the president’s directive.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman also announced Tuesday that New York would join a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against Trump over the sanctuary city directive.
“I will continue to do everything in my power to not just fight this executive order, but to protect the families caught in the chaos sown by President Trump’s hasty and irresponsible implementation,” Schneiderman said in a news release.
Trump has called for local officials to report to immigration officers people who are in jail and could be deported when they are released.
San Francisco’s lawsuit contends that Trump’s executive order violates the 10th Amendment, which establishes a balance of power between the federal government and states.
“The Executive Branch may not commandeer state and local officials to enforce federal law,” the lawsuit states.
Herrera described Trump’s action as a “wild overreach.”
“This country was founded on the principle that the federal government cannot force state and local governments to do its job for it, like carrying out immigration policy,” Herrera said.