Feds sue LA over 'sanctuary city' policies

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The U.S. Justice Department on Monday sued Los Angeles to invalidate the so-called sanctuary city ordinance that restricts local law enforcement from cooperating with the crackdown on immigrants by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In a complaint filed in LA federal court, the Justice Department argues that the city’s ordinance, “Prohibition of the Use of City Resources for Federal Immigration Enforcement,” which Mayor Karen Bass signed into law this past December, is preempted by federal immigration law.

“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level — it ends under President Trump.”

LA’s new sanctuary city law goes much further than other sanctuary statutes, such as the 2017 California Values Act, in obstructing immigration operations and directly seeking to undermine the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts, the government claims.

The City Council added an urgency clause to the ordinance which the Justice Department says acknowledges the purpose of the law is to thwart the “incoming federal administration” from carrying out its immigration policies.

“Because the city of Los Angeles found that President Trump’s immigration policies ‘will affect the public peace, health, and safety of all residents across the city,’ it decided to ’limit the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement,’” the government says in its complaint.

The Trump administration wants a federal judge to find the ordinance violates the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution and to bar LA from enforcing it.

The ordinance limiting the use of city resources for federal immigration enforcement was carefully drafted and fully complies with federal law and constitutional principles, the city attorney’s office said in a statement.

“The Constitution and federal law both allow the federal government to regulate immigration, but the reserved power of the state and the people including under the 10th amendment ensures our ability to defend the constitutionality of our ordinances and policies,” according to the city attorney.

ICE sweeps of businesses in downtown LA and Home Depot parking lots to round up people purportedly in the United States illegally sparked days of protests in the city this month and prompted Trump to send the National Guard to LA to confront the protesters.

The escalation of immigration enforcement, with masked ICE agents cruising through the city in unmarked vehicles to at times violently apprehend people they suspect of lacking proper residency status, in the city that’s home to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world, has resulted in a bitter war of words between political leaders in California and DC.

During a June 20 visit to LA, Vice President JD Vance accused California Governor Gavin Newsom and Bass of “egging on” rioters during the protests and thus forcing the president to employ the National Guard.

In response, Bass accused Vance of “spewing lies and utter nonsense” in an attempt to provoke division and conflict in the city.

“Unfortunately, the vice president did not take time to learn about our city and understand that our city is a city of immigrants from every country and continent on the planet," the mayor said on the day of Vance’s visit. “But then again, he did need to justify the hundreds of millions [of] taxpayer dollars that were wasted in the performance of a stunt and an experiment in the city and using men and women of our armed services, whose mission it is to protect our country.”

The recent ICE raids in Southern California and elsewhere in the country come as Trump seeks to make good on his campaign promise to deport millions of “illegal immigrants.” But whereas the administration insists that the people detained by ICE are violent criminals, or “the worst of the worst,” opponents of the enforcement actions have said that many of the detainees haven’t committed any crimes and have been living peacefully in the U.S. for years.

Local police in LA and elsewhere have been reluctant to get involved in immigration enforcement because they are concerned that it will make people in immigrant communities fearful to talk to police and report crimes such as domestic violence.

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