The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles, California, its mayor, Karen Bass, and its city council over policies impeding federal immigration enforcement.
According to the filing, the purpose of the sanctuary city law is to “thwart” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from “carrying out their statutory obligations as directed by Congress. The council members who passed the bill have publicly declared as much.”
The city’s policies are not only illegal, the DOJ argues, but are “designed to and in fact do interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”
By failing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, the city has seen “lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism,” the filing describes.
“The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from obstructing the Federal Government’s ability to enforce laws that Congress has enacted or to take actions entrusted to it by the Constitution,” the lawsuit states.
“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi. “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.”
U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the lawsuit was “long overdue.”
“Today’s lawsuit holds the City of Los Angeles accountable for deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration law. The United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits the City from picking and choosing which federal laws will be enforced and which will not,” he said. “By assisting removable aliens in evading federal law enforcement, the City’s unlawful and discriminatory ordinance has contributed to a lawless and unsafe environment that this lawsuit will help end.”
