MANHATTAN (CN) - A coalition of six states led by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block what they characterized as the Justice Department’s overreaching efforts to punish so-called sanctuary jurisdictions by conditioning federal funding on compliance with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The filing of the lawsuit came the same day that New York City fired back against the directive by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“Our message is clear: the Trump Administration’s actions are illegal and morally bankrupt,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
In July 2017, Sessions said the Justice Department will no longer award $385 million in grants to cities and states that refuse to help federal agents detain undocumented immigrants at local jails.
In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, attorneys general from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington and Massachusetts seek declaratory and injunctive relief to protect their ability to pursue their own law enforcement prerogatives in the manner that best achieves the safety and security of their communities.
Represented by Lourdes Rosado from the Civil Rights Bureau New York attorney general's office, the six states claim that the Justice Department’s conditions on Byrne JAG grantees “represents an unlawful, ultra vires attempt to force States and localities to forsake their own policy judgments and aid in federal civil immigration enforcement.”
The six states that sued today could lose a total of nearly $25 million.
Sessions’ funding measure would make law enforcement grants dependent the states providing access to their correctional facilities for federal immigration enforcement agents, advance notice to federal immigration authorities before an individual’s scheduled release from custody and accepting various conditions relating to an expansive interpretation of 8 U.S.C. 1373 — a federal information-sharing law which prohibits states and localities from restricting their officials from communicating with federal immigration authorities “regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
The states claim that the Department of Justice lacks discretion to impose these substantive conditions on grant funding.
Byrne JAG funds are used to support programs tailored to local law enforcement needs, including initiatives to combat gun violence, reduce violent crime, provide substance abuse services, support diversion and re-entry programs, improve criminal records systems, fight organized crime, prevent sexual abuse, and fund domestic violence legal advocacy.
The conditions dictated by the Sessions and the Justice Department force the states “to accept unlawful and unconstitutional conditions that diminish our sovereign ability to set our own law enforcement priorities and protect our communities, or forfeit Byrne JAG funding, thus undermining the vital programs that such funding supports,” the complaint charges.
New York’s Attorney General Barbara Underwood, whose state stands to lose $9 million in grant fund, said in a press release Wednesday “Local law enforcement has the right to decide how to meet their local public safety needs – and the Trump administration simply does not have the right to require state and local police to act as federal immigration agents,” Underwood added, “Instead of allowing New York’s law enforcement agencies to determine how best to keep New Yorkers safe, the Trump administration is threatening to withhold vital public safety funds.”
The states’ deadline for accepting their Byrne JAG allocation is August 10, 2018