ICE Responds to California “Sanctuary State” Law

PREDICTS “AT-LARGE ARRESTS IN LOCAL NEIGHBORHOODS AND AT WORKSITES”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Oct. 6, 2017) — On Friday afternoon, Acting Director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan issued a statement on the agency’s website in response to the signing by California Gov. Jerry Brown of SB54, which prevents law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status or sharing such information with federal authorities with an exception for those already convicted of crimes.

According to ABC News, the law, which takes effect on January 1, “gives the nation’s most populous state another tool to fight President Donald Trump.”

Brown signed a total of 11 immigration-related bills on Thursday affecting employers and landlords and to “expand immigration services for immigrants.”

In his response, Hogan said that “SB54 will negatively impact ICE operations in California by nearly eliminating all cooperation and communication with our law enforcement partners in the state, voiding the delegated authority that the Orange County Sheriff’s Office has under the 287g program, and prohibiting local law enforcement from contracting with the federal government to house detainees.”

The 287(g) program authorizes local law enforcers to coordinate the apprehension and processing of illegal aliens with federal authorities, including ICE.  The program, which stems from federal immigration law, has been expanding under the Trump administration.

“The bill does not prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Department of Homeland Security from enforcing federal immigration laws in California. Instead, the law says California will not use its own law enforcement resources to help in those actions,” SF Gate reported on Friday.

Hogan called the legislation “misguided.”

He further stated:

ICE will have no choice but to conduct at-large arrests in local neighborhoods and at worksites, which will inevitably result in additional collateral arrests, instead of focusing on arrests at jails and prisons where transfers are safer for ICE officers and the community. ICE will also likely have to detain individuals arrested in California in detention facilities outside of the state, far from any family they may have in California.

Article I of the U.S. Constitution assigns to the Congress the responsibility “To establish a uniform rule of naturalization.”

In its article, SF Gate quoted portions of Hogan’s statement.

Under the Obama regime, state-level laws affecting immigration were successfully challenged by the U.S. Justice Department.  On November 25, 2013, the Justice Department issued a press release in regard to Alabama’s HB 56 which stated, in part:

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama entered its final judgment today in United States v. Alabama, resolving the Justice Department’s constitutional challenge to Alabama’s immigration law, H.B. 56, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery of the Department’s Civil Division announced.

The judgment permanently prohibits Alabama from enforcing seven provisions of H.B. 56 that were designed to affect virtually every aspect of an unauthorized immigrant’s daily life, from employment to housing to transportation to entering into and enforcing contracts. The challenged provisions also threatened to impose significant burdens on federal and state agencies, diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal aliens and other high-priority criminal activity.

In 2010, the Justice Department also challenged Arizona’s HB 1070, which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately partially upheld and partially found unconstitutional.

“The Supremacy Clause gives Congress the power to preempt state law,” the majority of the justices wrote on page 2 of their opinion.  “Federal law specifies limited circumstances in which state officers may perform an immigration officer’s functions. This includes instances where the Attorney General has granted that authority in a formal agreement with a state or local government,” the court wrote on page 3.

“The federal power to determine immigration policy is well settled,” they stated on page 7.

In its initial press release about its legal challenge, Justice wrote that the law, signed by then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in 2010, “unconstitutionally interferes with the federal government’s authority to set and enforce immigration policy.” 

“A patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement,” Justice maintained.  “Having enacted its own immigration policy that conflicts with federal immigration law, Arizona “’crossed a constitutional line,’” Justice quoted from its filing at the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

A Georgia immigration law, HB 87, also faced legal challenge from the Obama Justice Department.

Sections of the new California law do not differentiate between “immigrants” and illegal aliens, although in a signing statement, Brown made that distinction with the word “undocumented.”