Summary: On Monday, a federal judge stopped Trump’s executive order regarding sanctuary cities.
A federal judge permanently blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that sought to strip funding to sanctuary cities. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick issued a permanent injunction, and the ruling represents a big setback to the White House’s strict immigration policies, according to CNN.
The White House has not said when it plans to appeal, but the Justice Department expressed their displeasure with the decision.
“The District Court exceeded its authority today when it barred the President from instructing his cabinet members to enforce existing law,” Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said.
Trump’s executive order was an attempt to control cities, counties, and states that wanted to protect undocumented immigrants who faced deportation by federal authorities. During his campaign, the Republican promised strict immigration policies, which included building a border wall between Mexico and the United States and deporting criminals from other countries. According to CNN, “The ruling was also the latest instance in which a federal judge has stood in the way of Trump’s effort to implement his hardline policies immigration, joining rulings that have blocked different portions of Trump’s travel ban and preliminary injunctions on the sanctuary cities order.”
Monday’s ruling was a result of lawsuits filed in California, and it voids Trump’s executive order, which sought to clamp down on areas such as Chicago, New York, and San Francisco that refused to comply with requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to find undocumented immigrants with the intent of deportation. In his ruling, Judge Orrick stated that Trump’s order violated the Fifth and Tenth Amendments.
“The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Executive Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds. Further, the Tenth Amendment requires that conditions on federal funds be unambiguous and timely made; that they bear some relation to the funds at issue; and that they not be unduly coercive,” the judge wrote. “Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.”
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera told The Washington Post that Judge Orrick’s ruling was a “victory.”
“No one is above the law, including the president. President Trump might be able to tweet whatever comes to mind, but he can’t grant himself new authority because he feels like it,” Herrera said in a statement. “This case is a check on the president’s abuse of power, which is exactly what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.”
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