Latest news with #immigrationlaws
CBS News
30-06-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Department of Justice files lawsuit against Los Angeles, Mayor Bass over sanctuary city policies
The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Karen Bass and the city of Los Angeles over sanctuary city policies, claiming they "interfere with the federal government's enforcement of its immigration laws," the department says. In the lawsuit, the DOJ alleges that days after President Trump won the November 2024 election, the city of LA and its officials worked to "thwart the will of the American people" by beginning to codify sanctuary city policies into law. The DOJ claims that LA's sanctuary city ordinance, Prohibition of the Use of City Resources for Federal Immigration Enforcement, signed by Bass on Dec. 9, 2024, prevents Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from carrying out their obligations under federal law. "Today's lawsuit holds the City of Los Angeles accountable for deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration law," said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California. "The United States Constitution's Supremacy Clause prohibits the City from picking and choosing which federal laws will be enforced and which will not." Court documents name the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, the Los Angeles City Council and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson as the defendants. CBS Los Angeles has reached out to Bass, Dawson and the city attorney for a comment and is awaiting a response. The lawsuit adds that the U.S. is currently facing a "crisis of illegal immigration" and claims the government's efforts to address the crisis are "hindered" by LA's sanctuary city policies. The lawsuit comes weeks after immigration operations across Southern California began ramping up, prompting demonstrations that mainly started peacefully but escalated into clashes between protestors and law enforcement. As a result, Mr. Trump ordered members of the National Guard and U.S. Marines to deploy to the region. A section of downtown LA was also affected by the violent demonstrations, including businesses being looted and public property being vandalized. Bass issued a curfew for a portion of downtown, which was lifted seven days after when safety conditions started to improve.
Associated Press
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
The Trump administration has sued Los Angeles, claiming the city refuses to cooperate on immigration
LOS ANGELES (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration on Monday sued Los Angeles, claiming the city is obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws and creating a lawless environment. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court says Los Angeles' so-called ' sanctuary city ' ordinance hinders the White House's efforts to crack down on what it calls a 'crisis of illegal immigration.' The Los Angeles policy bars city resources from being used for immigration enforcement and local departments from sharing information on people without legal status with federal immigration authorities. The court filing calls the city ordinance 'illegal' and asks that it be blocked from being enforced. Messages seeking comment on the lawsuit were sent to the offices of Mayor Karen Bass and City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto. The lawsuit claims Trump 'won the presidential election on a platform of deporting the millions of illegal immigrants.' Over the past three weeks, immigration agents have swarmed Southern California, arresting hundreds of people and prompting protests. Tens of thousands of people participated in rallies over immigration raids and the subsequent deployment of the National Guard and Marines. Los Angeles police have arrested over 100 people on various charges from throwing rocks at federal officers to setting fire to Waymo cars equpped with self-driving technology. 'The practical upshot of Los Angeles' refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities has, since June 6, 2025, been lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism,' the court filing says. On June 18, the mayor lifted a curfew she had imposed a week earlier to prevent vandalism and break-ins during nighttime protests. The demonstrations had been largely concentrated in a few downtown blocks that are home to several federal and local government buildings.
Washington Post
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Donald Trump's immigration plan needs a hard reset
On illegal immigration, President Donald Trump just rapidly executed a rare maneuver: the flip-flop-flip. His administration has spent months talking, and acting, tough on 'mass deportation.' But on June 12, he said that to avoid economic pain he would exempt farms, hotels and restaurants from worksite raids to enforce the immigration laws. In response, the Department of Homeland Security suspended such raids. Then, on June 15, Trump signaled that he was going to take back the exemptions: Mass deportation was back on, especially in places where Democratic officials refuse to participate in enforcing the law. The next day, the department confirmed that raids were back on. We're used to slapdash inconstancy from Trump. But his ambivalence is understandable and widely shared. On the one hand, the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. makes a mockery of our laws and outrages much of the public. On the other, many industries have come to rely on them and their sudden departure would disrupt the economy, just as Trump said. Those dueling impulses are why the past few decades have seen tough laws and lax enforcement. Trump's most recent idea for splitting the difference — cracking down in blue areas of the country but not red ones — would not improve matters if seriously pursued. What would it mean, to start with, for the rural parts of liberal states with sanctuary laws? California has a lot of farms. Besides, it doesn't make sense: Trump's position would be that illegal immigrants are both a scourge and must be kept living among his supporters — the very people most exercised about their presence in our country. But going full speed ahead on raids everywhere will continue to cause the difficulties that led Trump to consider backing off. The economic costs will fall on his supporters and opponents alike. The administration's methods of enforcing immigration law also seem to be generating public opposition (although Trump has the great advantage of facing a Democratic Party that voters do not believe is committed to fighting illegal immigration). It is suffering defeats in court based on its dubious interpretation of such laws as the Alien Enemies Act. Meanwhile, Trump isn't coming close, by his own administration's count, to deporting the millions of illegal immigrants that he has led many MAGA voters to expect. There is no way for Trump to meet those expectations or avoid difficult trade-offs. What's peculiar is how uninterested he has been in a policy that could ease those trade-offs: preventing illegal hiring in the first place rather than addressing it only after the fact. From time to time, Trump has endorsed making large employers use the E-Verify system to ensure that anyone they hire has legal authorization to work in the U.S. But he barely pushed for it in his first term and has done even less in his second. A broad E-Verify mandate would have multiple advantages over what he's doing. It would turn off the jobs magnet for crossing the border illegally or overstaying a visa. It would change the balance of incentives for undocumented immigrants between staying and returning home, with more of them 'self-deporting' in a way that avoids the litigation and costs of government roundups. Because the policy would apply to new hires instead of existing employees, it would also come with a built-in limit to the economic disruption it would cause. Finally, it would allow more direct enforcement efforts to prioritize criminals and lean less heavily on workplace raids. It's not a perfect policy. E-Verify would impose hardships on some undocumented immigrants — and which ones would depend on the vagaries of the labor market. Some employers would still resist. Some Trump supporters would be unhappy that the policy would, at least tacitly and temporarily, tolerate a large, continuing undocumented population. And the system would make errors. Existing law arguably allows the president to implement mandatory E-Verify on his own. Or Congress could put it in law, ideally pairing it with legal status for people who have spent most of their lives here after coming illegally as children. Alternatively, Trump's efforts at enforcing immigration law inside the U.S. could go the way of the U.S. DOGE Service: inflicting pain and polarizing the public in return for very little lasting progress on his stated objectives. He already seems to grasp the need for a course correction. He just needs to make the right one.
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump threatens Washington funding in executive order targeting sanctuary states
May 30—President Donald Trump sent a message to Washington state officials Friday when he signed an executive order designating nearly the entire state as part of what he called "sanctuary jurisdictions," for which he earlier had threatened to cut off federal funding. The list of "sanctuary jurisdictions" appears to name every Washington county except Adams. The list included Spokane County and also listed the cities of Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma, Everett and Yakima, but it did not name Spokane. The "Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens" executive order required the formation of a list of states and cities that Trump wrote were obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws. "Sanctuary jurisdictions including cities, counties, and states that are deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities," the order reads. "Sanctuary cities protect dangerous criminal aliens from facing consequences and put law enforcement in peril." However, the order does not take the next step and say that Trump intends to withhold federal funding from those places, like he tried earlier this year with San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and 14 other cities and counties it deems "sanctuary jurisdictions." "This is an eye-roller, a head-scratcher, but it doesn't come to me as a surprise at all," said Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, who is chair of the state House Appropriations Committee. Trump's "whole interest is to have jurisdictions bend the knee to whatever fleeting rant he happens to be in." Spokane County Commissioner Al French said he believes Spokane County made the list solely because of state law and insisted it is not a sanctuary county. He said the commission will meet with legal experts Monday to consider how to proceed while being mindful of the executive order. "It's concerning, because the executive order could jeopardize our funding from the feds," French said. "And not by anything we did, but by association." Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said only that city officials continue to follow all applicable laws but did not directly address the executive order. Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, pointed to the situation in Adams County, which Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued earlier this year and accused officials there of cooperating with immigration enforcement in violation of the Keep Washington Working Act, which lawmakers passed in 2019. That law protects the rights of immigrant communities from unnecessary contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As a result of the law, local police departments and sheriff's offices aren't supposed to share information with ICE or U.S. Border Patrol agents upon request, Aaron Korthuis, a staff attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, told The Spokesman-Review in March. Korthuis said the law also prohibits local officials from transferring individuals in custody to federal authorities or detaining individuals based solely on their immigration status, or to ask about a person's immigration status. Based on that law, Brown filed suit in Spokane County Superior Court in March alleging that Adams County Sheriff Dale Wagner held persons in custody based on their immigration status, gave federal agents confidential information and helped those agents question detainees in violation of the 2019 law. Following the filing of the lawsuit, Wagner said in a statement at the time that it was a "disappointing attempt to hinder our ability to uphold public safety." Schmick, of Colfax, and State Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, both sided with Wagner, when contacted Friday about the executive order. "I believe that we need to follow the federal law ... especially when people are in jail and ICE is looking for them," Schmick said. "They should be turned over to ICE so they can be deported. We do not want criminals on our streets." Asked if he feared that Trump may try to withhold federal funding to Washington, Schmick said local officials "better change the rules. I thought when they passed (Keep Washington Working) way back when, that we were setting ourselves up for problems. "Now we are the problem." Schoesler noted that states changed speed limits and drinking ages in the past based on threats from federal officials to withhold transportation funds. "If you look at the people being protected by sanctuary cities, they are some pretty bad people. I live in Adams County. They are not grabbing people from the fields and factories," Schoesler said. "We are talking about people who committed crimes. "Sheriff Wagner wants to follow the federal law. If you are a criminal and not here legally, he wants to cooperate. At this point, we'd do better if Nick Brown tried working with these people instead of having a lawsuit every week." Mike Faulk, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said Trump's executive order "is merely a list, and one that appears to be riddled with errors and false claims," he wrote. "Our bottom line, based on the facts, is that Keep Washington Working does not interfere with federal immigration law." Ormsby, the lawmaker from Spokane, called the executive order just the latest in a litany of proclamations and assertions coming from Trump. "It changes regularly, daily and hourly," Ormsby said. "My reaction is I'm very pleased that we have an attorney general in Washington state who is actively participating in lawsuits to stop some of this silliness that is coming out. "This is just the latest in a long list of gobsmacking things that have come out of this administration," he continued. "While it's difficult to take it super seriously, because it's in the early stages and will have to go through a legal review, I don't think it's an immediate issue for us." Spokesman-Review reporters Nick Gibson and Emry Dinman contributed to this report.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Midstate counties, communities among ‘sanctuary jurisdictions,' says DHS
(WHTM/AP) — Several Pennsylvania counties and communities are among those the Department of Homeland Security labeled as 'sanctuary jurisdictions' in a list published Thursday. 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release. Locally, Adams and Dauphin counties as well as Gettysburg borough and York city are listed. Statewide, counties included range from urban centers like Lehigh and Allegheny to rural areas like Clarion and Montour. Each municipality on the list, DHS says, will receive formal notification that they are believed to be noncompliant. The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. Download the abc27 News+ app on your Roku, Amazon Fire TV Stick, and Apple TV devices There's no specific or legal definition of what constitutes a 'sanctuary jurisdiction.' The term is often used to refer to law enforcement agencies, states or communities that don't cooperate with immigration enforcement. Pennsylvania municipalities included in the list include: Adams County; Allegheny County; Centre County; Chester County; Clarion County; Dauphin County; Delaware County; Lehigh County; Montgomery County; Montour County; Northampton County; Gettysburg borough; Philadelphia city; Pittsburgh city; State College borough; York city. Communities that don't cooperate with ICE often say they do so because immigrants then feel safer coming forward if they're a witness to or victim of a crime. And they argue that immigration enforcement is a federal task, and they need to focus their limited dollars on fighting crime. 'Sanctuary policies are legal and make us all safer,' said a coalition of local officials from across the country and a nonprofit called Public Rights Project in a statement Thursday. They said the list was a fear tactic designed to bully local governments into cooperating with ICE. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
