Justice Department Narrows Scope Of 'Sanctuary Cities' Executive Order

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions is narrowing the scope of an executive order on so-called sanctuary cities.

A federal judge in California last month blocked a key part of that order, reasoning that the Trump administration had overstepped by threatening to yank federal money from those places.

In the new memo, the attorney general defines the cities narrowly — as places that "willfully refuse to comply" with federal law. Sessions also made clear the threats apply only to a modest pool of grants administered by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, not the entire stream of U.S. funding for states and localities.

That point figured prominently in the recent ruling by federal Judge William Orrick, who wrote: "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."

Sessions recently notified several jurisdictions that their funding was at risk, insisting they provide proof they are complying with federal immigration law. The AG did not rule out naming and shaming more places that he says undermine the lawful system of immigration.

His new memo also signals that for future grants, federal authorities may prioritize places that honor requests to detain people in local law enforcement custody to give federal officials time to arrive.</s>Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that local governments refusing to cooperate in deporting convicted criminals risk losing their Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security grants.

Sessions issued a memo in response to an executive order issued by President Trump in late January directing the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that sanctuary cities will not be eligible to receive federal funds.

A federal judge last month issued a nationwide injunction on enforcing that part of the executive order after San Francisco said it could lose all its federal grant money.

But in his memo, Sessions said the order "will be applied solely to federal grants administered by the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security, and not to other sources of federal funding."

Sessions also said he has determined that sanctuary jurisdictions are those that "willfully refuse" to comply with a federal law that bars local governments from prohibiting their law enforcement officers to share information about the immigration status of people in their custody.

As a practical matter, the law most often involves detainer requests, issued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking local police and sheriff's offices to hold jail inmates for up to 48 hours after they have completed serving their sentences. The requests apply to people in the U.S. illegally who are convicted of committing local crimes and who are subject to deportation after they are released.

The Sessions memo appears to apply to cities and counties that have passed local laws forbidding their police to tell immigration authorities when a criminal, who is here illegally, is about to be released. It appears not to apply to local governments that fail to abide by the law because of manpower shortages or other reasons short of willful refusal.</s>This artwork by Nancy Ohanian refers to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.</s>U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that any move to withhold federal funding to “sanctuary cities” would be limited to federal grants controlled by the Justice and Homeland Security departments.</s>US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has offered a more narrow definition of "sanctuary jurisdiction," in order to circumvent the court rulings declaring one of President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration unconstitutional.In a memo released Monday, Sessions offered a more tapered definition of what constitutes a "sanctuary jurisdiction," saying that the term will only refer to "sanctuary cities" and "sanctuary states" which "willfully refuse to comply" with specific federal immigration laws."Federal law provides a process for foreign citizens to lawfully enter the country. Circumventing that process and crossing our borders unlawfully is a federal crime," Sessions wrote. "It is the role of federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to enforce our immigration laws, prosecute violations, and secure our borders."In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which stated that "sanctuary jurisdictions" were "not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary."In his memo, Sessions cites 8 US Code 1373, which states that local governments cannot restrict government employees from communicating with federal officers about individuals who may not be in the country illegally.The memo comes after US District Court Judge William Orrick issued an injunction against key parts of an executive order on immigration in April, barring the government from cutting off grants to local governments that refused to use their own funds to comply with federal detainer requests."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," Orrick wrote in his decision.The court ruled that the provisions in the order were unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment.In order to make the executive order constitutional, Sessions states that sanctuary jurisdictions will only be blocked from accessing grants from the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security, "and not other sources of federal funding."The rule will apply to any jurisdictions that currently receive grants as well as to any future grants from the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security, according to the memo. Sessions also said that any jurisdictions that are currently in violation will receive notice of their obligation to comply.At the end of his memo, Sessions hinted that while he is narrowing the definition of "sanctuary jurisdictions," he will continue to "point out ways that state and local jurisdictions are undermining our lawful system of immigration or to take enforcement action where state or local practices violate federal laws, regulations, or grant conditions."He stated that he will take this into consideration when deciding which grants his department will prioritize in the future and "may seek to tailor grants to promote a lawful system of immigration."</s>Sessions May Put More Rules On Money For Sanctuary Cities

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department is looking for more ways to deny coveted federal grant money to so-called sanctuary cities.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a department memorandum Monday that the department may “tailor grants to promote a lawful system of immigration.” That suggests officials could seek ways to withhold money from communities that refuse to honor detainer requests from federal immigration authorities.

A judge in April blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to withhold funding from some localities, saying the president doesn’t have the authority to attach new conditions to spending by Congress. But the Sessions memo suggests the Justice Department still can attach more stringent conditions to the money it doles out.

Sessions already has threatened to pull money from jurisdictions that hinder communication between local police and immigration authorities.</s>United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions will visit the Bluff City to speak with law enforcement.

Sessions will be in Memphis on Thursday to speak with federal, state, and local law enforcement about efforts to combat violent crime and restore public safety.

Sessions received push back from lawmakers when he brought up Memphis earlier this month while discussing a plan to cut back on crime. He cited the rising opioid addiction and violent crime rates in Memphis, along with cities such as Chicago and Baltimore.

Memphis City Councilman Berlin Boyd said the remarks were misguided and insulting.

"I find it quite insulting for him to categorize Memphis with some of the larger cities like Chicago," Boyd said.

Earlier this month, Sessions promoted tougher sentencing and directed federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against the majority of suspects.

But, many local lawmakers didn't agree with tougher sentencing being the solution to reduce crime.

WMC Action News 5 will be sure to follow Sessions’ visit to Memphis and any developments that come from his meetings with local law enforcement.</s>Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulled back on President Trump’s January executive order cracking down on “sanctuary cities” on Monday, releasing a memo that represents a significant retreat from the order’s original goal of punishing jurisdictions that limit collaboration between local authorities and federal immigration agents. The memo narrowly defines sanctuary cities to “refer only to jurisdictions that ‘willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373.’” Section 1373, which was signed into law in 1996, prohibits jurisdictions from preventing any government entity or local official from exchanging information on an individual’s immigration status with federal immigration agents. There’s no clear definition for sanctuary cities. Sessions’s latest memo, which comes after a federal court in California blocked the president’s threat against sanctuary cities, concedes that using Section 1373 as the administration’s definition is perhaps the most legally sound approach. What the Spike in Immigration Arrests Might Mean for Detention Centers The problem for the administration’s immigration crackdown is that definition of “sanctuary city” exempts all but a few jurisdictions, as most found ways around that criteria years ago. “If sanctuary just means violation of 1373, that law has been around since 1996 and for the most part… most major cities have dealt with this, most legal departments in major cities have dealt with this [and] have already written around 1373,” said Rick Su, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who has researched immigration and local government. Su noted that Section 1373 is a “don’t-tell policy,” so to work around it, some localities changed it to a “don’t-ask policy” or a “don’t-use-municipal-resources” policy. In doing so, it became difficult to differentiate who is and isn’t in compliance with Section 1373, since some localities simply don’t collect information on an individual’s immigration status in the first place and therefore don’t have anything to share with federal immigration officials.

Last year, the Office of the Inspector General studied a handful of state and local jurisdictions to see if they were in compliance with Section 1373. In April, the Justice Department sent letters to nine jurisdictions identified in the report “as having laws that potentially violate 8 U.S.C. 1373.” The executive order had left open to interpretation how the administration was going to define sanctuary cities. “It was not clear as to what the vehicle that they would use for finding that someone was going to be penalized for being a sanctuary city,” said Muzaffar Chishti, the director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University School of Law, adding that Sessions suggested in March that the Justice Department would use Section 1373 as a threshold. U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued a preliminary injunction against the president’s order in April, saying, “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.” “This is the Trump era,” Sessions said in a statement responding to the ruling. “Progress is being made daily, and it will continue. This will be the Administration that fully enforces our nation’s immigration laws.” To some degree, the administration’s hands are tied. Session’s memo states that grants will only be withheld from jurisdictions that are not in compliance with Section 1373. That is similar to Orrick’s ruling on the administration’s interpretation of sanctuary jurisdictions: “This interpretation renders the order toothless,” Orrick wrote. “The government can already enforce these three grants by the terms of those grants and can enforce 8 U.S.C. 1373 to the extent legally possible under the terms of existing law.”

In doing so, the administration appears to be reconciling their aggressive rhetoric on illegal immigration and their immigration-enforcement initiatives on paper. “This seems to be an effort by Jeff Sessions to say, ‘no really the lawyers’ position for the most part is a representation of my and the Department of Justice position and indirectly the president’s position on what the executive order says,” Su said. To some degree, the administration’s hands are tied. They can’t change immigration law unilaterally, and they’d need congressional approval to withhold certain funds from localities. Even then, however, the administration runs the risk of facing more legal challenges. Lena Graber, a special projects attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, pointed to a 2012 ruling that upheld Obamacare in our conversation in January. That ruling found that requiring states to expand Medicaid by threatening to revoke funds is unconstitutionally coercive. For now, the memo notes that the requirement that jurisdictions comply with Section 1373 only applies to Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security grants, though it adds that the Department of Justice “may seek to tailor grants to promote a lawful system of immigration.” The burden is on localities to prove that they are in compliance with Section 1373. Chishti noted that it’s unlikely that many will be: “No jurisdiction in the country has been penalized or formerly found in violation of Section 1373 ever since it was enacted in 1996,” he said. Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports reduced immigration, is confident in the administration’s approach. “I think they’re going about this the right way. This is what I expected. It’s what was outlined in the executive order and again, we have to remember that isn’t the only action that the Trump administration is taking to address sanctuary.” Indeed, the administration has also ramped up arrests of undocumented immigrants. But in its pursuit of sanctuary cities, the administration appears to have retreated to a more modest approach, despite the scope of the president’s executive order months earlier.</s>MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions will be in Memphis this week.

Sessions will be here Thursday morning to talk to law enforcement about fighting violent crime and restoring public safety.

Stay with News Channel 3 for coverage on his visit.</s>U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that any move to withhold federal funding to “sanctuary cities” would be limited to federal grants controlled by the Justice and Homeland Security departments.

But, in a memo, the attorney general made clear that cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials will risk that funding.

The memo comes after a federal judge in California issued a temporary injunction last month, blocking enforcement of an executive order from President Trump—issued five days into office-- that sought to deny federal money for sanctuary jurisdictions.

The Justice Department, in court filings and meetings with state officials, has sought to minimize the impact and scope of the order. Sessions has encouraged states and cities to voluntarily cooperate, calling it a matter of public safety, by honoring so-called “detainer” requests to turn over certain suspected illegal aliens to federal law enforcement.

In the memorandum, Sessions said “the Department of Justice will require jurisdictions applying for certain Department grants to certify their compliance with federal law.” But enforcement of any cities that limit cooperation with federal authorities over certain immigration matters “will be applied solely to federal grants administered by the Department of Justice or the Department of Homeland Security, and not to other sources of federal funding.”

At issue in the ongoing legal fight is the definition of “sanctuary city” and which localities would be subject to sanction, as well as the extent to which Sessions has the authority to designate sanctuary jurisdictions.

Sessions noted immigration enforcement remains a top administration priority, especially the section of federal law known as 8 USC 1373, which says local communities may not interfere in communications with federal authorities regarding an individuals’ immigration status.

Last month, the Justice Department sent letters to nine jurisdictions ordering them to prove compliance with Section 1373 before June 30 or risk losing certain grants for the current fiscal year.

The attorney general said his department would continue using its authority and flexibility when denying any federal money to sanctuary cities. “Going forward, the Department, when authorized, may seek to tailor grants to promote a lawful system of immigration,” Sessions said in his Monday memo.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions narrows the scope of the order against so-called sanctuary cities.