President-elect Donald Trump connected “Meet the Press” Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024 (NBC News/YouTube).
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is suing the City of Denver, the authorities of Colorado and locally elected officials implicit their “disastrous policies” and “sanctuary laws” — saying they “interfere with and discriminate against” the government’s enforcement of national migration law.
The DOJ’s lawsuit, filed connected Friday, marks the 2nd clip the Trump medication has gone aft a authorities implicit “sanctuary policies” that it claims bounds practice with national migration enforcement “by intent and design.” The City of Chicago and Illinois were targeted successful a February lawsuit that accused section officials of “making it much hard for, and deliberately impeding, national migration officers’ quality to transportation retired their responsibilities.”
The DOJ’s suit against Denver and the Centennial State points to headline-grabbing incidents successful the Mile High City and its surrounding metro area, including Aurora, related to the Venezuelan pack Tren de Aragua arsenic impervious of the “sanctuary” laws failing.
“At the extremity of past year, the federation was shocked by images and videos of members of Tren de Aragua seizing power of flat complexes successful Aurora, Colorado,” the DOJ’s ailment says.
“The information that a overseas violent enactment could summation specified a foothold successful the United States of America is unacceptable,” the department alleges. “It is the nonstop byproduct of the sanctuary policies pushed by the State of Colorado, and definite of its subdivisions. This is simply a suit to enactment an extremity to those disastrous policies and reconstruct the supremacy of national migration law.”
Responding to the lawsuit, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued a connection saying that if the courts were to deem “any Colorado law” arsenic being not valid, past the authorities would travel the ruling. The City of Denver, meanwhile, said it “will not beryllium bullied oregon blackmailed, slightest of each by an medication that has small respect for the instrumentality and adjacent little for the truth,” according to The Denver Post.
Colorado, overmuch similar Illinois, has go 1 of the epicenters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations since President Donald Trump took bureau successful January.
The DOJ says Colorado’s policies, specifically, person “tied the hands of instrumentality enforcement, emboldened unsafe criminals and near [Colorado’s] communities vulnerable,” according to its complaint.
“Local communities successful Colorado person borne the brunt of these policies,” the ailment alleges. “In the words of Douglas County Colorado Commissioner Kevin Van Winkle: ‘We swore an oath to support nationalist safety, but these laws forestall america from doing so. … These laws necessitate america to conceal the individuality of those who committed a transgression and are present illegally. That’s a superior nationalist information issue.'”
For its Illinois suit, the Trump medication cribbed from the Barack Obama administration’s playbook and sourced ineligible theories from a 2010 lawsuit filed by the Obama medication against Arizona S.B. 1070, a statute wide known arsenic the “show maine your papers” law. The Obama-era suit yet made its mode to the U.S. Supreme Court successful a 2012 lawsuit stylized arsenic Arizona v. United States. The effect was mostly a triumph for national authorities, applying the mentation that astir of the authorities instrumentality conflicted with oregon was different preempted by national migration instrumentality connected point.
In 2018, the archetypal Trump medication filed a lawsuit against California implicit its sanctuary policies. That suit yet went nowhere, though, arsenic the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled successful the Golden State’s favour and the nation’s precocious tribunal denied the government’s petition for writ of certiorari.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.