More cities, counties join immigrant sanctuary lawsuit seeking to block Trump funding cuts
- States Newsroom
- Jul 9
- 3 min read
By Tim Henderson
Stateline
Thirty-four cities and counties, including Chicago and Los Angeles, have asked to join a California lawsuit seeking to stop the Trump administration from cutting federal funding based on sanctuary policies that limit cooperation with the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
The expansion of the case could be a sign that more cities are seeing the benefit of suing to protect their rights in court from a Trump administration that is often acting without regard for legal precedent. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly limits nationwide injunctions means that cities and states must be part of a lawsuit to get the benefits of any injunction that would stop such policies while the legal merits are debated in court.
The federal judge in the case, William Orrick of the U.S. District Court of Northern California, did issue an injunction April 24, telling the Trump administration it couldn’t use executive orders to withhold federal funding from the original 15 cities and counties in the lawsuit. Orrick updated the injunction June 23 to include later policy memos tying “all new federal awards” to immigration compliance. The Trump administration said it would appeal the injunction.
“It appears that the defendants continue to seek an end run around the preliminary injunction,” Orrick wrote in June. Orrick left the door open for the administration to withhold funds directly tied to illegal immigration, but he said the administration still must make a case that there’s a real connection between immigration and other issues — especially with seemingly unrelated programs like highway and housing funds.
If the new cities and counties are accepted into the lawsuit, there would be a total of 50 localities in 14 states: California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
Local governments have authority over their police and aren’t required to participate in immigration enforcement.
– Jonathan Miller, attorney for counties and cities suing over funding threats
The Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA, limiting nationwide injunctions, now “creates more impetus in this litigation and in others for more parties to seek relief to protect themselves,” said Jonathan Miller, one of the attorneys working on the case for the Public Rights Project, a California-based group promoting civil rights protections for states and cities.
Generally, the local sanctuary policies at stake are those that limit cooperation with “detainers” asking local law enforcement authorities to hold arrested people in jail up to two days after they would otherwise go free, on behalf of federal immigration investigations. Some states and localities limit cooperation with the detainers, and some require cooperation.
“[Trump officials] are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to getting local governments to do their bidding and this case is pushback against that,” Miller said. “Local governments have authority over their police and aren’t required to participate in immigration enforcement.”
In a March filing, attorneys for the Trump administration defended the planned funding cutoffs as part of the president’s Jan. 20 executive order 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.”
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, in a response to a reporter’s question that was posted July 8 by the White House, said the administration is determined than ever to go after cities that don’t fully cooperate.
“We’re going to double down and triple down on sanctuary cities. Why? Not because they’re a blue city or a blue state, but because we know that’s where the problem is,” Homan said. “We know they’re releasing public safety threats.”
According to June numbers obtained by the TRAC data clearinghouse at the University of Syracuse, nearly 44% of people held in immigration detention have no criminal record and many others have only minor offenses such as traffic violations. The rest were detained based on pending charges or purely immigration-related offenses such as crossing the border in secret.
• Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
