Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday released final guidance that calls on the Justice Department to withhold grants from certain “sanctuary” city jurisdictions, in a bid to crack down on cities and jurisdictions that refuse to follow federal requests to detain illegal immigrants.
In a memo released Monday afternoon, Sessions said he and Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly have decided that a sanctuary jurisdiction will refer “only to jurisdictions that ‘willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373.'”
Section 1373 requires state and local jurisdictions not to limit communications with DHS about people’s citizenship or immigration status. Hundreds of cities and counties nationwide have policies that prohibit local officials from cooperating with requests for illegal immigrants to be held until they are picked up by federal officials.
But many of these local jurisdictions have argued that while they are not obeying these federal requests, they are not blocking those requests from being sent in. For that reason, these city and county leaders say they are not in conflict with Section 1373, and therefore should not be considered a sanctuary jurisdiction.
Sessions wrote that the guidance is a response to Executive Order 13768, which President Trump signed in January. That order stated that “sanctuary jurisdictions” will not be “eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes” by Sessions or Kelly.
Going forward, the Justice Department will require jurisdictions applying for department grants to be certified as in compliance with Section 1373 “as a condition for receiving an award.”
Sessions wrote that the grants affected by the policy are those administered by the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Sessions said all grantees “will receive notice of their obligation to comply with Section 1373.”
Sessions said that the executive order’s definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction is “narrow,” but he wrote that “nothing in the Executive Order limits the department’s ability to point out ways that state and local jurisdictions are undermining our lawful system of immigration or to take enforcement action where state and local practices violate federal laws, regulations, or grant conditions.”
Last month, the DOJ wrote a letter to California and at least seven other jurisdictions warning them about their immigration enforcement policies.
The letters went to the California Board of State and Community Corrections, as well as officials in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Miami, Milwaukee, New York and Cook County, Ill., asking for proof they are cooperating with Section 1373.
A lack of cooperation, Justice Department said, could mean the jurisdictions are violating the terms of agreements concerning their department grants. The deadline to prove compliance is June 30.
It is unclear if the memo will conflict with the ruling of a federal district court judge, who last month ruled the part of the executive order that would defund sanctuary cities exceeded federal law.
“Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration-enforcement strategy of which the president disapproves,” federal judge William Orrick wrote.
Sessions’ memo, however, noted that the grants affected would only be those that “contain[] this certification condition and to future grants for which the department is statutorily authorized to impose such a condition.”
