A US judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump's executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities, dealing another legal blow to the administration's efforts to toughen immigration enforcement.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III granted a nationwide preliminary injunction on a key part (Section 9) of Trump's January 25 executive order, in which the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security were given the responsibility designate various states and local jurisdictions as "sanctuary jurisdictions" and to make sure they "are not eligible to receive federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes".
Sanctuary cities generally offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
He delivered a withering attack on Judge Orrick, and attacked Santa Clara and San Francisco, the two counties in California that had sued to halt Mr. Trump's executive order.
Orrick wrote, "Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement can not be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the president disapproves".
Lawyers for the federal government had argued in the sanctuary cities case that only funding related to law enforcement would be withheld.
The decision on Tuesday would stay in place while the lawsuit moves through court. California was informed it could lose $18.2 million. Spokesman Ian Prior explained, "Further, the order does not purport to enjoin the department's independent legal authority to enforce the requirements of federal law applicable to communities that violate federal immigration law or federal grant conditions".
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus described the ruling as another example of the "9th Circuit going bananas".
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Instead of proceeding with May's planned "Great Repeal Bill", Labour will introduce an "EU Rights and Protections Bill", he said. And the customs union is a classic example. "Rigidity and recklessness is the government's approach".
But Orrick sided with the jurisdictions, which argued that the administration has clearly targeted all federal funding.
"Notwithstanding the judicial activism of Judge Orrick, FAIR is confident that the president's executive order will ultimately be upheld by the courts", Mehlman said in a statement.
It said, "San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands".
The requests apply to people in the USA illegally who are convicted of committing local crimes and who are subject to deportation after they are released. The federal government can appeal the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "It is encouraging to see that a federal judge agrees that the vindictive threats that Trump and his administration have been directing toward cities like Santa Ana are unfounded and should not be upheld". The man standing trial for her killing is an illegal immigrant shielded from deportation by the city's policies.
Priebus says the ruling will eventually be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, because it's unreasonable that an agency couldn't put restrictions on how money is spent. The funding cutoff applies to three Justice Department and Homeland Security Department grants that require complying with a federal law that local governments not block officials from providing people's immigration status, he said.
A federal appeals court blocked the travel ban.
The sanctuary city order was among a flurry of immigration measures Trump has signed since taking office in January, including a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and a directive calling for a wall on the border with Mexico. The administration then revised it, but the new version also is stalled in court.
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