The Trump administration is taking aim at sanctuary cities, using four billion dollars in federal grants as its ammunition, but mayors in sanctuary cities from New York to Los Angeles say they won't be bullied. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is threatened to strip cities of funds if they don't pledge they're complying with the law that bars officials from withholding information about a person's immigration status from Immigrations and Customs
Enforcement or ICE. I strongly urge our nation states and cities and counties to consider carefully the harm they are doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws,
and to rethink these policies. Sessions announcement was a repetition of an executive order signed by President Trump five days after taking office, and of a policy the Justice Department announced last July during the Obama administration, joining us our David Rifkin, a partner at Baker Hostetler and Leon fres Go, a partnered Hollandon Knight and former Deputy A G for the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Justice Department. Leon.
Sanctuary cities often adopt rules that prohibit their police officers from even asking people about their immigration status, so it isn't available to share with the federal government. Are those cities in violation of this law? Well, the statute, which is a USC thirteen seventy three, says that if you do not cooperate with a request from the federal government for information, you are in violation. So the affirmative act of not asking about someone's immigration status would not put
you in violation of a USC thirteen seventy three. What would put you in violation is if the federal government actually made a request for information to you and you refuse that request. So so just to be clear, there's nothing that these sanctuary cities who are doing that are
doing wrong or against the law. Correct. No, the the actual text of the UFC thirteen seventy three says you have to refuse a request for information about immigration status from the federal government to be in violation of that. And so what happens most of the time, the way this controversy arises is that ice will ask a local or state jail, can you please give me the information of at what time and on what day you're going
to release x individual? And then the state and locality doesn't give that time, and so then now I have to go find that person instead of being able to locate the person on the date and time of their relief from jail. David, the step that the Attorney General announced yesterday, I'm a little unclear as to whether it is just enforcing a pre existing rule that was actually put in place by the Obama administration, or something considerably
broader than that. What's your take. I think it's appearance a little unclear. I think that there are sufficient grounds and they disagree with my colleague to take view that a willful failure to collect this information coupled. Look, we have to be real here, uh. When a number of cities and other jurisdictions have conspicuously prohibited the employees from collecting this information, justifying it publicly at the time it was done so they don't have to provide it to defense,
it's it's a little uh, it's a little bizarre. And I hear that it doesn't violate a statute that requires sharing of information if you read the statutory language broadly, this is certainly a way to avoid or evade at point number one, point number two. There's a lot of other things sanctuary cities are doing okay relative to not cooperating with detainers, which channel Sessions mentioned a number of whom involved individuals with most horrific uh convictions or at
least suspicions most horrific conduct. And I don't understand one thing. Look, there's clearly because of fiddles and principles, the anti corrosion and that comment doing principles. Uh, the federal government cannot force states to spend their resources and personnelity enforced federal law, and they cannot curse them. Okay, they should have a
courage of their convictions. They should not seek to obtain federal funds uh, and they should stand on on their belief that they want to be open and they want to have lots of undocumented aliens. That would be an honorable way to proceed doing both, which is continuing to sort of uh feed at the federal trough and squeal then the funds are being denied while affirming their right to have a separate immigration policy. David, let's let Leon get in here for a moment. Leon, do you agree
with that? Well, first, I don't agree that there's any legal requirement whatsoever for a city to affirmatively do anything. The only legal requirement that exists in the statute is that a city has to respond to a request for
information about immigration status that is given by the federal government. Now, having said that, there are cities that do refused to do that, and I do think there's a question of whether a city should think that that is a proper use of it's of its of its resources, given that there might be better you know, this might be the
ideal population to focus your removal resources. But having said that, the idea of a detainer having for a city or local a locality to keep someone in detention, to hold them when they would otherwise be released so that ICE can come pick them up. The problem is this exposes cities to lawsuits all the time because many times these detainers end up being improperly issued. The person is a US citizen, or the person has otherwise some status that
shouldn't get them detained. And what happens is when that locality gets sued for holding the person unlawfully, ICE doesn't come in and identify these folks for the cost of that detention. And so that's the problem. These cities are caught betwixt and between do we listen to ICE and potentially have ourselves subject to civil litigation, or do we not listen to ICE and be called the sanctuary city. And so that part of it is the problem that
too many people aren't discussing. David, I'm guessing you want to respond, we have about a minute. It's disingenuous because lots and lots of those cities are proudly from the intent to define immigration law. And let me ask my colleague one simple question. Are you aware of the the instances where don't involve uh A lawful aliens at all, but one jurisdiction is asking another jurisdiction to hold somebody
while they're seeking a warrant. To realize how much law enforcement cooperation transpires into different sphere, We'll live in a world where you know, an American who's who has been accused of rape but for whom a warrant has not been obtained, has a better chance of being held temporarily and naver jurisdiction and a law for ailien. That's that's absurd, that's leon thirty seconds. Rep The difference is that the
detention there is criminal detention. Here, the detention would be for the purpose of removal, and if you can't actually remove the human being, then that's atention is considered unlawful. And then it's the city that's stuck with the bill for the lawsuit. That's the problem. I'm not saying whether I agree with the policy or not. I'm just saying that the law currently doesn't allow the city to get
indemnified when the federal government makes a mistake. All Right, it's a it's a long debate that we're going to be having a lot in the future. I want to thank you both. That's David Riston, a partner at Baker Hostetler and Leon Fresco. He's a partner at Holland and Night. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Law, thanks to our producer David Sutterman and our technical director Mark Sinniss.
Couching coming up, Bloomberg Markets with Carol Master and Corey Johnson is starting and they will be talking about a variety of things, including uh Trump executive orders to cancel Obama policies,