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DOJ Sues City of Los Angeles Over Sanctuary Ordinance, Citing Supremacy Clause – RedState

Attorney General Pam Bondi has filed suit against the City of Los Angeles related to its sanctuary city policies, arguing that they violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and is asking that they be enjoined/blocked from being enforced, reports Fox News’ Bill Melugin.





In the suit, the U.S. Department of Justice states that sanctuary policies intentionally discriminate against the federal government by treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents:

“Sanctuary City laws and policies are designed to deliberately impede federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in those jurisdictions. The Los Angeles Ordinance and other policies intentionally discriminate against the Federal Government by treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents through access restrictions both to property and to individual detainees, by prohibiting contractors and sub-contractors from providing information, and by disfavoring federal criminal laws that the City of Los Angeles has decided not to comply with. The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment—as the challenged law and policies do—thereby discriminating against the Federal Government. Accordingly, the law and policies challenged here are invalid and should be enjoined.”

Bondi told Fox News:

“Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles. Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level – it ends under President Trump.”





Los Angeles has been a sanctuary city informally since 2017, when the City Council adopted a sanctuary resolution, which doesn’t carry the force of law. After President Trump’s election in 2024, city officials quickly worked to codify its sanctuary status. The ordinance, sponsored by City Council members Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Eunisses Hernandez, became effective December 19, 2024.


RELATED: Taxpayer-Funded Riots: Here’s What We Found When We Followed the Money in Los Angeles


At the start of the riots in Los Angeles earlier this month, Soto-Martinez and Hernandez stood beside CHIRLA Executive Director Angelica Salas as they whipped an anti-ICE crowd into a frenzy and encouraged them to take to the streets and fight.

The Los Angeles Police Department has carried out sanctuary policies for decades, starting with Special Directive 40, which prohibited officers from stopping people for the sole purpose of ascertaining their immigration status and from arresting them for entering the country illegally.

On December 21, 2016, during the term of Chief Charlie Beck, LAPD’s Chief of Detectives sent a memo to “All Commanding Officers” stating that department personnel:

“…[S]hall not detain an inmate already in local custody for state or local violations, for the sole purpose of transferring custody of the inmate to ICE, unless at least one of the following conditions is present:

  • A judicial determination of Probable Cause for the detainer, or
  • An arrest warrant from a Judicial Officer.

“Custody Services Division will not honor IDNA’s.”





For the uninitiated, an IDNA is an Immigration Detainer Notice of Action. So, in a situation where ICE has gone through the bureaucracy to request a detainer, the LAPD brass is flipping them off and saying, “Come back with a judge’s signature on it.” And even then, the policy states that no IDNA’s will be honored without the consent of the Commanding Officer of the Custody Services Division.

The City’s 2024 ordinance went much further, including all city departments, and tracks California’s sanctuary state law, SB54, which was passed in 2017 and became effective in 2018. The first Trump administration sued the state over portions of that law, arguing that it violated the Supremacy Clause, and lost at the Ninth Circuit. The Supreme Court declined to take up that case. We’ll see what happens this time around.

UPDATE:

U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, has issued a statement regarding the lawsuit:

Today’s lawsuit holds the City of Los Angeles accountable for deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration law. The United States Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prohibits the City from picking and choosing which federal laws will be enforced and which will not. By assisting removable aliens in evading federal law enforcement, the City’s unlawful and discriminatory ordinance has contributed to a lawless and unsafe environment that this lawsuit will help end.











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