Trump: Federal Payments to Sanctuary Cities to Be Suspended Feb. 1

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that the federal government will suspend payments to so-called sanctuary cities that defy federal immigration enforcement.

“Starting February 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities,” Trump said during a speech in Detroit, referencing jurisdictions whose policies prohibit local authorities from cooperating with federal immigration agents.

Trump said that such cities “do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens, and it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come. So we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary.”

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Since reclaiming the Oval Office, Trump has made immigration enforcement a priority for his administration and already made similar bids to defund sanctuary jurisdictions—but so far has been blocked from doing so in federal courts.

Trump’s latest comments on the issue come as Trump faces increasing opposition in Democratic-led areas to his immigration policy, particularly in the wake of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement-involved fatal shooting of a protester in Minneapolis.

The defunding move is expected to face challenges in the court, as courts have ruled the president’s authority to rescind congressionally-appropriated funding is limited by law.

In April, a court prohibited a push by Trump to rescind funding for jurisdictions deemed to be “sanctuaries.”

In his order, federal Judge William H. Orrick of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sided with the plaintiffs—San Francisco, Santa Clara, and 14 other cities that would be affected by executive orders to strip federal taxpayer funding from them.

Orrick tied the ban to broad separation of powers principles, the Spending Clause of the Constitution, and the Fifth Amendment’s due process requirements.

“The challenged sections ... to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funding apportioned to localities by Congress, violate the Constitution’s separation of powers principles and the Spending Clause ... [and] the Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process,” Orrick wrote.

At the time, Orrick barred Trump from implementing any funding cuts to such cities pending further litigation.

In August, Orrick sustained his order, ruling that the administration could not pull funding to Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and 30 other cities and counties dubbed sanctuaries by the administration solely as a result of those policies.

The renewed push to defund such cities fits into the Trump administration’s larger goal of stopping illegal immigration and carrying out what the president has said would be “the largest deportation operation in American history.”

In 2017, during his first term, Trump signed Executive Order 13768, which would have stripped funding from jurisdictions considered sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.

That executive order was based on ensuring compliance with 8 U.S. Code § 1373, which bars “a Federal, State, or local government entity or official [from prohibiting], or in any way restrict[ing], any government entity or official from sending ... or receiving from ... information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”

Another executive order issued by Trump during this term, EO 14159, ordered the attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security secretary to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi has issued a directive defining a sanctuary city as “state or local jurisdictions that refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. § 1373, refuse to certify compliance with § 1373, or willfully fail to comply with other applicable federal immigration laws.”

However, the implementation of EO 13768 and EO 14159 has been blocked due to Orrick’s ruling.

Without a higher court overturning Orrick’s rulings, any moves to defund sanctuary jurisdictions would be in contravention of law.

 

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