Federal judge tosses Trump administration's ‘sanctuary city’ lawsuit against Illinois
A federal judge on Friday threw out a Trump administration lawsuit seeking to block sanctuary laws in Illinois that limit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
In her ruling, Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins said that the Tenth Amendment, which protects people from federal government overreach, shielded the decision of local law enforcement to avoid collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration agencies.
“It would allow the federal government to commandeer States under the guise of intergovernmental immunity—the exact type of direct regulation of states barred by the Tenth Amendment,” Jenkins wrote of the suit, which named Illinois, Chicago and a series of local officials as defendants.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Illinois prevents local officials from providing immigration information “not otherwise publicly available,” while Chicago bars them from responding to inquiries from ICE without a warrant. State officers are also barred from complying with immigration detainers.
The Trump administration argued that the local laws were an “intentional effort” to subvert federal immigration statutes and claimed that they facilitated the return of criminals to the public.
Chicago was one of the first major fronts in the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign, with federal agents swarming the city in the weeks after the inauguration.
The lawsuit was one of the first cases filed by the Trump administration against so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.
The Justice Department sued New York City over its sanctuary policies on Thursday.