Justice Dept. rules intensify crackdown on sanctuary cities

The conditions apply to one of the Justice Department’s most popular grant programs, which provides police departments money to buy everything from bulletproof vests to body cameras. The requirements will apply to cities seeking grants starting in September.

Sessions for months had been warning jurisdictions they could lose money, just for having rules that limit communication among local police and immigration officials. The new conditions say officials must let Department of Homeland Security employees have access to local jails in order to meet with immigrants and must give them 48 hours’ notice before releasing an immigrant wanted by immigration authorities from their custody.

“This is what the American people should be able to expect from their cities and states,” Sessions said. “And these long overdue requirements will help us take down MS-13 and other violent transnational gangs, and make our country safer.”

Some cities continued to resist the pressure.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office said it would fight to keep the grant funds, calling them key to keeping neighbourhoods safe from gangs and crime.

“Mayor Garcetti believes that cities have a right to create sensible policies that keep our neighbourhoods safe and protect our residents,” the mayor’s spokesman, Alex Comisar, said in an email to The Associated Press.

A judge in April blocked Trump’s executive order aimed at withholding funding from sanctuary cities, saying the president could not set new conditions on spending approved by Congress. But the Justice Department said it still could condition some of its grants to force cities to co-operate with immigration authorities.

Jorge Baron, executive director of the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, said he expected states or local jurisdictions to challenge the restrictions under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves powers to the states that are not specifically delegated to the federal government.

But beyond that, he argued, it’s simply a bad idea to have local authorities enforcing immigration law: “Imagine your house is getting broken into and an undocumented person walks by and sees it. That undocumented person isn’t going to call 911 if they’ve heard the local police or the sheriff is involved in immigration enforcement.”

The Supreme Court has held that there must be a reasonable relationship between the grant condition and the purpose of the money being withheld, said Mary Fan, a University of Washington law professor. The grant program in question is the main source of federal criminal justice funding to the states and local jurisdictions. Any states or cities that challenge the new requirements are likely to argue that enforcement of immigration laws — which generally fall under civil, not criminal, statutes — is not reasonably related to criminal justice funding, she said.

“The overarching purpose of the grants is to prevent and control crime,” Fan said. “That’s a very broad rationale, and it gives the Trump administration more room to argue that the condition is reasonably related to the purpose of the money. The administration has made clear that in its view, undocumented immigration is associated with crime.”

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Johnson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Sadie Gurman And Gene Johnson, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Justice Dept. rules intensify crackdown on sanctuary cities

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