A federal judge in California on Thursday barred the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the use of federal funds to "sanctuary" jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with President Donald Trump's hardline immigration crackdown., saying that portions of his executive orders on the matter were unconstitutional.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday blocked Donald Trump's administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions
U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued the injunction at the request of 16 cities and counties nationally led by San Francisco that in a lawsuit filed in February argued 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.
"The threat to withhold funding causes them [the cities] irreparable injury in the form of budgetary uncertainty, deprivation of constitutional rights, and undermining trust between the Cities and Counties and the communities they serve," Orrick wrote in granting the injunction.
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 that it said were interfering with Trump's agenda.
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 Democrat-led state from sharing vehicle and address information with federal immigration authorities.