A law firm headed by top Trump administration advisor Stephen Miller has filed an appeal contestingCalifornia’s “sanctuary state” statuson behalf of Huntington Beach and top officials likegubernatorial hopeful Chad Bianco.
The firm, America First Legal, argues that the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to strike down a 2017 law banning local law enforcement from working with federal immigration officials should be overturned.
The AFL says the district court judge who last year denied the the firm’s initial challenge, which had been backed by the Justice Department and former Attorney General Pam Bondi, “incorrectly applied the ‘South Lake Tahoe’ doctrine” — a rule that prevents local governments from challenging the constitutionality of state laws in federal court.
The first Trump administration filed a similar challenge, which wasstruck down in 2018.
District Court Judge John Mendez, a George W. Bush appointee, denied that challenge because he believed the law did not impedefederal immigration officials. “Refusing to help is not the same as impeding,” he said in his ruling.
The AFL, founded by Miller in 2021, told The Post that the dismissal of the challenge puts law enforcement officers in a bind.
“California has put its own law enforcement officers in an impossible position: violate state law, or violate federal law,” AFL Senior Counsel James Rogers said.
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“A state government targeted its own officers for following federal law, and then a district court said those officers had no right to even walk into a courthouse to challenge it. That is an outrage,” he added.
California is home to 10.9 million migrants, and in 2023 had about 2.25 million undocumented migrants, according toPew Research Center data.Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been active in the state since Trump’s second term began, with local politicians hostile to their presence.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
