Campaign Action
Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is hell-bent on rigging the immigration courts against immigrants and due process, but in the courtrooms out of his clutches, he continues to lose:
A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled this week that the U.S. Department of Justice cannot withhold public safety, policing grants in so-called “sanctuary cities” where local law enforcement officials can choose not to turn over suspected undocumented immigrants in custody over to federal immigration authorities.
U.S. District Judge Manuel Real issued a “permanent, nationwide ban against a Justice Department policy that gave an edge to obliging police departments applying for a community policing grant program,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
According to Think Progress, “the ruling agreed with an argument made by the city of Los Angeles that the DOJ had ‘abused its power by awarding bonus points to grant applicants that commit to cooperating with federal immigration authorities and policies.’” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer called it “a complete victory.”
"This is yet another dagger in the heart of the administration's efforts to use federal funds as a weapon to make local jurisdictions complicit in its civil immigration enforcement policies”—and yet another loss for the administration in its war on localities that have taken legal, locally decided actions to protect their immigrant communities.
“San Francisco previously defeated the Trump administration in a legal challenge over the president’s executive order withholding federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions,” Bloomberg reported. “Federal judges in Chicago and Philadelphia also ruled against Trump over the administration’s attempt to make funding conditional on cooperation with its crackdown on undocumented immigrants.”