DOJ Directs Prosecutors to Probe Officials Who Obstruct Immigration Enforcement

A new memorandum lays out the direction.

The Department of Justice in Washington on Aug. 12, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Jan. 21 directed prosecutors to investigate instances when state and local officials act to obstruct immigration enforcement.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said in a memorandum to all department employees that the U.S. Constitution requires state and local actors to comply with federal immigration enforcement and that federal law bars the actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands from the executive branch.

“The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution, including for obstructing federal function” in violation of a law that prohibits conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the federal government, Bove said in the three-page document, a copy of which was published by Politico.

That law carries a prison term of up to five years for each count.

Bove also pointed to another law that bars individuals from bringing illegal immigrants into the United States, or harboring them in the country. Violators can receive up to 20 years in prison and can even face the death penalty if a violation results in the death of any person.

President Donald Trump’s administration has already started a mass deportation effort, targeting illegal immigrants who officials say are public safety threats. The administration this week authorized arrests of illegal immigrants at churches, schools, and other places previously designated off-limits as “sensitive sites” in most cases.

Some local officials have expressed opposition to the deportation plan. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that city officials will not cooperate with federal immigration officers.

Bove, in the memo, also said that the Civil Division of the DOJ will look into laws, policies, and activities that “threaten to impede” Executive Branch immigration efforts, such as by preventing the disclosure of information to federal authorities.

DOJ officials will, where appropriate, “take legal action to challenge such laws,” Bove wrote.

Bove also said that the DOJ will resume the practice of pursuing the most serious offense that prosecutors can prove. That practice was in place during the first Trump administration. Under former President Joe Biden, officials revoked the policy and encouraged prosecutorial discretion.

“In selecting the appropriate charges, prosecutors should consider whether the consequences of those charges for sentencing would yield a result that ‘is proportional to the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct, and whether the charge achieves such purposes of the criminal law as punishment, protection of the public, specific and general deterrence, and rehabilitation,’” Merrick Garland, attorney general at the time, wrote in 2022.

“Such decisions should be informed by an individualized assessment of all the facts and circumstances of each particular case. The goal in any prosecution is a sanction that is ’sufficient, but not greater than necessary,' to satisfy these considerations.”