Trump admin sues LA over sanctuary policies
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Donald Trump is ramping up his war against liberal 'sanctuary city' Los Angeles with a new major lawsuit. The Justice Department, led by Trump appointee Pam Bondi, sued the city on Monday following weeks of anti-ICE riots and destruction.
The lawsuit argues that LA's policies attempting to 'deliberately' thwart the work of immigration agents violate federal law. 'Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,' Bondi said in a statement to the Daily Mail.
'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.' It comes after DOJ also sued Chicago, Illinois, Denver, Colorado, Rochester, New York, challenging the cities' so-called sanctuary policies.
Los Angeles has drawn the ire of the Trump administration as local authorities were unable to quell the riots that overran parts of the city earlier in June. In response to the riots, Trump took control of the California National Guard and ordered them to descend upon the city.
He directed them to 'provide safety around buildings and to those that are engaged in peaceful protests, and also to our law enforcement officers, so they can continue their daily work,' as described by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a CBS interview earlier this month. Trump later called in the Marines to Los Angeles to protect the Wilshire Federal Building, which houses several federal offices amid further riots that were planned in the city.
Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was thrown out of a press conference held by Noem in LA earlier this month. The spectacle occurred after he reportedly did not identify himself as a member of Congress during the event and lunged towards the from of the room where Noem was speaking.
'I was hoping José Padilla would be here to ask a question. But, unfortunately, I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn't the theater, and that's all it is,' Vance lamented at the time. 'It's pure political theater. These guys show up, they want to be captured on camera doing something,' Vance added.
The real José Padilla, a US citizen, was convicted of supporting al Qaeda and was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison in 2007. California lawmakers, including Governor Gavin Newsom, took no time to slam the vice president - saying that he clearly made the slip up on purpose.
Taylor Van Kirk, Vance's press secretary, told NBC News: 'He must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.' 'They want to be able to go back to their far-left groups and to say, `Look, me, I stood up against border enforcement. I stood up against Donald Trump,´' Vance added. A spokesperson for Padilla, Tess Oswald, noted in a social media post that Padilla and Vance were formerly colleagues in the Senate and said that Vance should know better.
'He should be more focused on demilitarizing our city than taking cheap shots,' Oswald said. Vance's visit to Los Angeles to tour a multiagency Federal Joint Operations Center and a mobile command center came as demonstrations calmed down in the city and a curfew was lifted. That followed over a week of sometimes-violent clashes between protesters and police and outbreaks of vandalism and looting that followed immigration raids across Southern California.
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