Jeff Sessions lost in court over sanctuary cities — again


A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Department of Justice in a case against California concerning sanctuary cities.
At issue was Attorney General Jeff Sessions' policy of making public safety grants dependent on cities' compliance with his department's demand for cooperation of local police forces with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) efforts to crack down on illegal immigration. Sessions required grant recipient cities to share information as well as prison and jail access with ICE.
This is one of several similar losses the Trump administration has taken at court over its sanctuary city opposition. Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick permanently blocked President Trump's executive order to cut funding to the cities, calling it "unconstitutional on its face." And in April, a federal judge likewise sided with Los Angeles against the DOJ, ruling the agency can't dole out federal funding based on whether jurisdictions follow sanctuary city policies.
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Sanctuary cities limit cooperation with federal immigration agents, arguing immigrants will be discouraged from reporting crime if they are worried about deportation. Read more about sanctuary cities and how they work here at The Week.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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