Three nonprofits are asking to represent Los Angeles voices in a federal lawsuit over Trump administration policies that cut off funding to places that do not allow local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement work.
Los Angeles is among many local jurisdictions, including cities, counties and some states, that have passed laws restricting or banning local police from working with federal immigration officers to arrest and deport residents. The city is, however, conspicuously absent from a lawsuit led by San Francisco and filed in February by more than a dozen jurisdictions with so-called sanctuary laws.
To make sure Los Angeles is included in any orders made by the judge in the case, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and Central American Resource Center have moved to intervene on behalf of the city’s residents.
“Every major sanctuary community as far as we can tell is part of the lawsuit with the exception of Los Angeles. We are filling that gap,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel, which, along with Hecker Fink LLP, is representing the nonprofits in the case.
Laws that limit local police’s involvement with federal immigration enforcement help communities stay safer because when immigrants are afraid of potential deportation consequences, they won’t call for help if they are victims of crimes, said Alvaro Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which provides legal services to immigrants.
“We have a lot of our clients who are scared right now,” Huerta said. “They’re feeling threatened even in a city as welcoming as Los Angeles.”
Huerta said some residents have been afraid to leave their homes or send their children to school, especially after immigration officials recently showed up at two Los Angeles-area elementary schools.
He wasn’t sure why the city itself hadn’t joined the lawsuit, which includes the California cities of Emeryville, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose and Santa Cruz.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment concerning the proposed legal intervention by the nonprofits.
The state of California has, for years, had laws that limit the ways that local law enforcement can interact with federal immigration officials. In November, the Los Angeles City Council voted to make the city a sanctuary, going beyond those state laws to restrict such cooperation.
The city of Los Angeles did not respond to a request for comment.
In the lawsuit, the local governments argue that their policies do not interfere with federal immigration enforcement and that the federal government can’t force them to use their resources to participate in it.
“The basic theory of the case is that the federal government is outside its lane,” Rosenbaum said. “It has no business seeking to compel communities that are just being communities. That’s what cities do. That’s what counties do. They make decisions as to how they want to use their resources and policies that serve their population.”
Judge William Orrick, an appointee of President Barack Obama, heard similar cases during President Donald Trump’s first term and ruled in favor of the cities.
In the current case, the local jurisdictions have requested a preliminary injunction that would block the Trump administration’s policies until the judge makes a decision in the case.
Attorneys with the Department of Justice have argued against the injunction and said that if the judge is going to block the administration from going forward with its plans, then he should limit his order to the places listed in the lawsuit.
That’s part of what makes the nonprofits’ intervention so important, Rosenbaum and Huerta said.
Orrick will hear arguments about the potential preliminary injunction on Wednesday. A hearing on the nonprofits’ inclusion in the case is scheduled for June.
