Trump officials join legal fight over SB 4
Trump administration team to face off against cities filing lawsuits.
Trump administration lawyers announced Friday that they will defend Texas’ Senate Bill 4, a state ban on “sanctuary cities,” from myriad legal challenges when it heads to a federal courtroom next week.
“The Department of Justice fully supports Texas’s effort and is participating in this lawsuit because of the strong federal interest in facil- itating the state and local cooperation that is critical in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in the announcement.
The addition of Justice Department attorneys to the fray has set up what could be a blockbuster hearing in U.S. District Court in San Antonio. Justice Department attorneys will join attorneys representing Texas in defending suits brought by many of Texas’ largest cities, including Austin, as well as advocacy groups from across the nation that have challenged the law.
“Stopping SB 4 is bigger than Texas,” Austin City Council Member Greg Casar said Friday. “Because Trump wants to fulfill his promises of mass deportations, the federal government needs to find ways to commandeer local law enforcement resources to aid them in the arrest, detention and deportation of immigrants.”
SB 4 creates civil and criminal penalties for politicians who would bar full compliance with detention requests for local jail inmates U.S. immigration authorities suspect are in the country illegally. It also empowers local law enforcement officers to investigate a person’s immigration status during routine encounters, such as during traffic stops.
The bill’s author, state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, has said the law is meant to keep communities safer and to counter “a culture of contempt for the federal law in this area.”
Critics say the law will lead to racial profiling. And many of the legal challenges to the law state that it violates the Fourth Amendment and is unconstitutional because SB 4 creates immigration law, a power reserved solely for the federal government.
Numerous Texas cities, including Austin, have sued the state in an attempt to block SB 4, which is set to take effect Sept. 1.
In a 54-page motion filed Friday, Sessions asserts SB 4 should stand because the law doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment and isn’t preempted by the Constitution’s supremacy clause. The Justice Department says honoring so-called immigration detainers will not lead to racial profiling.
However, federal attorneys make no mention of the provision in the Texas law that will allow any law enforcement officer to investigate a person’s citizenship status, one of the parts of SB 4 that critics find most troubling.
The formal federal intervention didn’t come as a surprise, after Justice Department officials Monday contacted many of those seek- ing to block SB 4, notifying them that the federal government was interested in the suit.
“I certainly expected the Justice Department to get involved,” Austin Mayor Steve Adler told the American-Statesman on Friday. “The issues presented here are not local, and the impact of the issues presented are national.”
Adler and Casar said they will be at the hearing, and witness lists from San Antonio and Austin indicated that several elected officials will offer testimony in the hearing, which starts at 9:30 a.m. Monday.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund have planned rallies near the courthouse.
During Monday’s hearing, the plaintiffs’ attorneys will attempt to show that SB 4 will cause harm to the greater public, according to court documents. Justice Department lawyers have asked to be able to argue in the case but will not present any evidence, said Nina Perales, MALDEF’s vice president of litigation.
Presiding Judge Orlando Garcia likely won’t make an immediate ruling on the plaintiffs’ request to temporarily block SB 4 from going into effect, Perales said.
A separate case involving SB 4 — the state’s suit against Travis County and the city of Austin — will have a first hearing Thursday in Austin.