The County of San Francisco, California is leading a coalition against Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions.
On Friday, San Francisco, together with King County, Washington, and the cities of Portland, Oregon and New Haven, Connecticut sued the Trump administration.
The lawsuit targets Trump’s executive order directing for federal funding to be withheld “from jurisdictions that refuse to use their local resources to carry out his immigration agenda,” and a February 5 Department of Justice memo the suit alleges “threatens not only termination of funding but also civil and criminal prosecution of any jurisdiction that refuses to comply.”
“This is the federal government illegally asserting a right it does not have, telling cities how to use their resources, and commandeering local law enforcement,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in statement announcing the lawsuit.
Chiu continued, “This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution. That is illegal and authoritarian.”
San Francisco also filed a suit against Trump in 2017, for an executive order that made sanctuary jurisdictions ineligible for federal grants.