Sanctuary cities and states had better prepare for the federal lawsuits soon to come from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department (DOJ).
It has already sued Chicago and Illinois over their unlawful sanctuary statutes that protect illegal aliens — even violent criminals — from deportation.
And yesterday, the department sued New York City and the state over their “Green Light Law” that unlawfully blocks the federal government from accessing the database of the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
“It stops today,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said. And other sanctuaries had better “get ready” for lawsuits against them.
The Lawsuit
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, the 16-page lawsuit explains that the Green Light Law is unconstitutional.
It not only prohibits the DMV from sharing its illegal-alien database with the federal government but also requires “New York’s DMV Commissioner to promptly tip off any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested his or her information,” the lawsuit explains.
The suit says elected officials’ purpose in passing the law was to impede immigration enforcement. “They have achieved their objective.”
The New York law also regulates the federal government’s ability to control immigration. No state or local government is permitted to do that under the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof … shall be the supreme Law of the Land … any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
According to the three-count suit:
Federal immigration law expressly preempts state and local laws that restrict sharing information with the Federal Government ‘regarding the immigration status … of any individual.’ See 8 U.S.C. § 1373(a).
But that is exactly what the Green Light Law does.
Moreover, under conflict preemption principles, a State cannot fashion “an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives” of the federal immigration laws. …
The Law singles out federal immigration agencies for adverse treatment — the exact discrimination the Constitution forbids. By intent and design, the Green Light Law is a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them. … Federal law does not tolerate this sort of obstruction. Nor does the Constitution. New York’s Green Light Law cannot stand.
Amusingly, the lawsuit cited a blue-state amici curiae brief in the Obama administration’s lawsuit to overturn Arizona’s state immigration law SB 270. That law made illegal entry into the United States a state crime, criminalized seeking unauthorized work as an illegal alien, mandated that state and local law enforcement verify the citizenship of anyone lawfully detained or arrested, and permitted warrantless searches of illegal aliens. The DOJ suit noted from the brief:
“The removal of undocumented immigrants is [an] exclusively federal function,” and the Federal Government alone decides “not only who may be removed from the United States, but how such individuals should be identified, apprehended, and detained.”
New York was a signatory.
The US. Supreme Court did not overturn the whole law, but did strike down those provisions.
DOJ’s lawsuit against New York City and the state lodges three counts of violating the Supremacy Clause. First, their Green Light Law violates the federal statute that forbids states and localities from not sharing “information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.”
Second, the law unlawfully regulates the federal government by preventing it from enforcing immigration laws.
Third, it unlawfully discriminates against the federal government by singling out immigration authorities “for disfavored treatment.”
“It Stops Today”
Speaking at a news conference, the hard-nosed Bondi made terse remarks.
“New York has chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens,” she said:
It stops. It stops today. As you know, we sued Illinois and New York didn’t listen. So now you’re next. Millions of illegal aliens with violent records have flooded into our communities, bringing violence and deadly drugs with them.
Also speaking was Tammy Nobles, mother of Kayla Hamilton, the 20-year-old murdered in Maryland by Walter Martinez, an MS-13 gang member from El Salvador. Border agents caught him at the border, but on the standing orders of the Biden administration, released him.
“He came over as an unaccompanied alien child, saying that he was afraid of gang activity in his country,” Nobles said. “Health and Human Services called him a nice boy.”
The “nice boy” strangled Hamilton with a telephone cord, then raped and murdered her.
Amazingly, far-left authorities in Maryland permitted him to attend high school while cops investigated the murder. Five state and federal agencies did not inform the school system it had a murder suspect on its hands.
Bondi warned other states to prepare their lawyers:
We did it to Illinois. Strike one. Strike two is New York. And if you are a state not complying with federal law, you’re next. Get ready.
Albany’s Times Union newspaper explained that the Green Light Law, which gives driver’s licenses to illegals, created a program that is “mired in fraud.” The newspaper revealed in 2021 that
there had been allegations of widespread cheating in the driver permit program, involving schemes to illicitly obtain driving credentials for immigrants. Many of those individuals allegedly also used the licenses to falsely prove New York residency in order to receive unemployment benefits under the state’s pandemic-era Excluded Worker Fund.
In December, DOJ indicted five men for conspiring to obtain more than 1,000 bogus driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Two of those indicted were, not surprisingly, immigrants. They fled to Brazil, the newspaper explained.
DOJ sued Chicago and Illinois on Supremacy Clause grounds last week over four laws that block federal immigration authorities from arresting and deporting illegals.
That lawsuit included an attack on statutes that shield violent illegal-alien criminals from arrest and deportation by ignoring detainers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
