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The counties of Santa Clara and San Francisco announced on Friday that they will be filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over actions targeting “sanctuary cities,” which prohibit use of local law enforcement in assisting federal immigration officials with enforcement.
In announcing the suit, county officials pointed to attempts by President Donald Trump to freeze federal funding to state and local governments with non-cooperation policies and attempts by administration to “commandeer local resources and law enforcement officers to take on the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.”
“The federal government does not have the legal authority to strongarm local jurisdictions into using their own resources to serve the federal government’s immigration priorities,” County of Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said in a news release. “The Trump Administration does not have the right to take over our local resources and effectively conscript our own law enforcement officers into being federal immigration enforcement agents.”
The county officials cited an Executive Order 14159, which Trump signed on Jan. 20. The order calls for the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security 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.”
“Further, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall evaluate and undertake any other lawful actions, criminal or civil, that they deem warranted based on any such jurisdiction’s practices that interfere with the enforcement of Federal law,” the order states.
The Department of Justice also filed a lawsuit on Feb. 6 against Chicago and state of Illinois, challenging their non-cooperation laws.
County officials strongly dispute the notion that non-cooperation policies in impede immigration enforcement. These policies, they argue, are needed to ensure local resources are devoted to local priorities like providing services to vulnerable populations and traditional enforcement activities to promote local public safety, the news release states. The courts have repeatedly upheld local governments’ Constitutional right to choose a policy of non-cooperation, the news release noted.
“Chaotic orders to hold Congress-approved federal funds to cities and counties is not only illegal but will hurt public safety and health for everyone, including the 2 million people right here in Santa Clara County,” Santa Clara County Board President Otto Lee wrote in a statement.
The two counties had similarly sued the federal government during the Trump administration over its attempt to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities. Federal district courts and the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 2018 that conditions on federal funding were unconstitutional and that County policies complied with federal laws. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2021.
Santa Clara County Executive James R. Williams called the recent Trump orders “flagrant, unconstitutional threats against state and local governments across the nation.
“This is the next chapter of the same playbook that was used eight years ago. The County litigated against the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional efforts in 2017 and prevailed in court; we will do so again today,” Williams wrote in the news release.
Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga, whose district includes Palo Alto and Mountain View, said that the county serves to help “all residents without regard to immigration status, and without collecting information about immigration status.”
“Our law enforcement officers do not – and should not – assist in immigration raids. It is simply not the job of local governments, and this lawsuit puts Santa Clara County at the forefront of the effort to resist the Trump Administration’s push to unlawfully force jurisdictions to do its bidding.”
The two counties are joined in the lawsuit by the city of Portland, Oregon; the city of New Haven, Connecticut; and King County, Washington. The lawsuit will be filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, according to the news release. Santa Clara County Board Vice President Sylvia Arenas called the lawsuit “a clear message that we will hold the line as we’ve done before, in solidarity with our immigrant communities, to stand up against the Trump Administration’s bullying and intimidation tactics to withhold federal funding for critical County services.”
“Our region and country were built on the backs of immigrants, and we must have courage to continue standing strong,” Arenas said in a news release. “We will remain united and stand up for justice, if that means noncooperation with mass deportations that aim to separate our families.”
