SF City Attorney David Chiu is leading a lawsuit against the Trump administration for targeting sanctuary cities, and Chiu’s odds may be good, because his office brought the same lawsuit against Trump in 2017 — and won.
On Wednesday night, a protest wound its way through the Mission District in opposition to President Trump’s mass deportation plans and ICE crackdowns. SF City Attorney David Chiu was apparently got the message.
On the heels of last week’s anti-deportation rally at City Hall, KQED reports that Chiu is leading a new lawsuit against the Trump administration in an SF federal court for targeting sanctuary cities. Trump has been threatening to withhold federal funding from, and prosecute government officials in sanctuary cities like San Francisco that do not assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in deportation operations.
“The Trump Administration’s actions have nothing to do with public safety because we know that sanctuary laws improve public safety,” Chiu said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. “This is the federal government illegally asserting a right it does not have, telling cities how to use their resources, and commandeering local law enforcement. This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution. That is illegal and authoritarian. As local officials, we have a right to do our jobs without threats and interference from the federal government.”
The Trump administration issued a Day One executive order saying that sanctuary cities would lose their federal funding (that order is entitled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion”). This week, the Department of Justice issued a memo telling federal law enforcement officials to prosecute local officials who do not aid in ICE enforcement operations. And just yesterday, new US Attorney General Pam Bondi sued Chicago and the state of Illinois over their sanctuary city policies.
But Chiu may well have the law on his side. San Francisco brought essentially the exact same lawsuit against the previous Trump administration in 2017, under then-City Attorney Dennis Herrera. Herrera won that lawsuit in federal court and in the appeals court, and the Trump-backed appeal of that decision was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2021.
While Chiu’s office is leading the lawsuit, his office is joined in the suit by Santa Clara County, and the cities of Portland, Oregon, and New Haven, Connecticut, as well as Washington state’s King County.
“We have seen the administration moving so fast, and oftentimes so chaotically, it’s difficult to tell when they are putting something forward or withdrawing it,” Santa Clara County counsel Tony LoPresti said at a Friday press conference alongside Chiu. “So rather than be caught flat-footed, we definitely felt like we needed to be proactive rather than wait for the impacts to our residents in our community.”
Related: City Hall Rallies After at Least Five ICE Operations Were Attempted (and Apparently Failed) In SF [SFist]
Image: SF City Attorney
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