The Trump administration is suing the state of California, charging the state with undermining the ability of the federal government to enforce immigration laws.
At issue in the lawsuit filed Tuesday are three laws enacted last year by California that reinforce so-called sanctuary policies, which aim to protect immigrants who are in the state without documentation from deportation.
One statute bars employers in California from cooperating voluntarily with immigration agents. The second authorizes the state’s attorney general to monitor immigration enforcement by federal agents. A third relieves local officials of an obligation to inform federal agents about immigrants who may be living in the country illegally.
Taken together, the laws “violate the Supremacy Clause, by, among other things, constitution an obstacle to the United States’ enforcement of the immigration laws and discriminating against federal immigration enforcement,” the Justice Department charged in court papers filed in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento.
I do not regret sharing this information. It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws. We believe our community is safer when families stay together. pic.twitter.com/ng13yq431L
— Libby Schaaf (@LibbySchaaf) February 28, 2018
The lawsuit comes amid a crackdown by the Trump administration on sanctuary policies and follows the arrests by federal agents of 232 people in Northern California as part of the administration’s intensifying enforcement in the region.
Libby Schaaf, the Democratic mayor of Oakland, warned of imminent raids by federal immigration agents in the San Francisco Bay area. The warning helped about 800 people avoid arrest, said federal officials, who blasted the mayor and said they would investigate her for obstructing justice.
“I do not regret sharing this information,” Schaaf said. “It is Oakland’s legal right to be a sanctuary city and we have not broken any laws.”