Sanctuary jurisdictions won a round in the legal battle against President Trump on Friday when a federal judge shut down his lawsuit against Illinois, Chicago and Cook County, saying the 10th Amendment protects their right to refuse to assist federal immigration arrests.
Judge Lindsay Jenkins, a Biden appointee to the court in Illinois, also said the policies don’t run afoul of federal law.
She said the policies at issue amount to a refusal to cooperate but don’t go so far as to thwart federal agents, so they pass muster. And she said if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to force cooperation, it should obtain a criminal warrant.
Trump lawyers had argued that the jurisdictions ran afoul of Section 1373 of the immigration code, which bars governments at all levels from prohibiting their staff from sending or receiving information about immigration status.
Judge Jenkins said that issue has been heavily litigated in other lower courts and none has ever adopted the Justice Department’s expansive reading.
She said custody status and release dates — which ICE often asks for — don’t fit into what the law requires.
And she said if the law is broader than that, it would be “in tension” with the 10th Amendment, which guarantees states the right to be free from being commandeered by the federal government.
“If the state, county and city cannot control whether and how their employees share information with the federal government, they cannot affirmatively opt out of enforcing federal immigration laws. This conflicts with the guiding principle of anticommandeering: knowing and voluntary cooperation,” the judge wrote.
The lawsuit is one of a series of challenges the Trump team has brought against sanctuaries.
Others include New York state, New York City, Minnesota and Colorado.