DOJ Moves to Clamp Down on Sanctuary Cities

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Department of Justice sent nine letters today reminding "sanctuary" jurisdictions that "as a condition for receiving certain financial year 2016 funding from the Department of Justice, each of these jurisdictions agreed to provide documentation and an opinion from legal counsel validating that they are in compliance with Section 1373." Here's DOJ's press release.

The move is the administration's latest effort to clamp down on sanctuary cities. We posted on President Trump's original EO here.

Section 1373 says that "a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual."

The DOJ letters to sanctuary cities say that the FY 2016 Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program conditions federal funds on compliance with this provision. That Program provides funds for law enforcement and related purposes. It amounts to a relatively modest sum of federal support for the targeted jurisdictions and probably runs well short of all federal spending in these jurisdictions. (President Trump's EO, in contrast, targets all "Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.")

These features may make it more difficult for targeted jurisdictions to challenge DOJ's latest move and any subsequent move to withhold federal funds as applied to JAG Program grants. (If the JAG Program makes this condition specific, and if immigration enforcement is sufficiently related to the purposes of the JAG grant for any given targeted jurisdiction, and if the amount of money involved does not turn pressure into compulsion, then a move to withhold JAG funds from jurisdictions that don't comply may withstand judicial scrutiny.)

But because President Trump's EO remains on the books with its full breadth, jurisdictions can still lodge facial challenges against the administration to block the full force of the EO. And the pending cases challenging the EO on its face are likely to move forward, despite this latest DOJ move.