Yesterday, a federal district judge in San Francisco halted implementation of Trump’s executive order yanking federal funding from sanctuary cities until they complied fully with federal immigration law. Of course, the Trump White House is pissed about this, because “unelected judges” should never question His Royal Cheetoness.
The White House’s statement on the situation contains the usual fear-mongering and bombast about undocumented immigrants and crime, and blah blah blah we’ve heard it all before. But it also contained a strange error (not a spelling or grammar error):
“Once again, a single district judge — this time in San Francisco — has ignored Federal immigration law to set a new immigration policy for the entire country.”
Halting an executive order, and keeping existing policies in place for the time being, is setting “a new immigration policy?” Since when? It was Trump who was trying to change something – Judge Orrick didn’t make any policy anywhere. This makes no sense. None. Zero, zip, zilch, nada.
Judge Orrick halted the order because it places new conditions on federal spending – something the president doesn’t have the authority to do. The power of the purse rests solely with Congress, as Congressional Republicans were so fond of pointing out every single time President Obama twitched his pinky finger in the general direction of the federal budget.
If Trump did have that authority, the conditions under which he could do it still couldn’t be coercive. The very intent of this order is to coerce sanctuary cities into giving up their sanctuary status.
Trump can try and get this kind of defunding into an appropriations bill, or get Congress to draw it up in its own bill, but that’s it.
The White House also completely ignored the fact that one of the things undocumented immigrants do is help law enforcement with crime investigations. They’re a lot less likely to give witness testimony, or even report crimes, when they fear deportation.
That makes cities less safe, not more.
But that doesn’t matter to a white nationalist administration like this one.
In the meantime, the White House will continue to attack the judiciary just for doing its job.
Featured image by Olivier Douliery-Pool via Getty Images
