The Trump administration filed a lawsuit on April 24 alleging that the city of Rochester, New York, had violated the Constitution and federal law through multiple policies barring cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
In a statement posted to the city’s website, they said that “the City fully intends to defend the legality of its policies, and to use this opportunity to hold the federal government to task and ensure that it does not commandeer local resources in violation of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.”
The 10th Amendment generally reserves certain powers for states and says that the “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Trump administration has accused the city of violating the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which says states are bound by federal law. It pointed to a city council resolution and two policies from the Rochester Police Department restricting cooperation, including information sharing, with federal authorities.
“[Those policies] violate the Supremacy Clause, interfere with federal law, and create obstacles to the enforcement of federal immigration law,” the lawsuit reads.
It pointed to federal law prohibiting restrictions on information sharing about an individual’s immigration status.
The Justice Department is asking for a federal judge to declare Rochester’s policies unconstitutional and contrary to federal law and therefore invalid.
Like Evans, Orrick cited the 10th Amendment and said that freezing federal funding imposed a “coercive condition intended to commandeer local officials into enforcing federal immigration practices and law.”
The Justice Department’s lawsuit states that the country’s efforts to fight a “crisis of illegal immigration” were “hindered by Sanctuary Cities such as the City of Rochester, who refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.”
