Exclusive — U.S. Attorney: Sanctuary City Lawsuit Against L.A. ‘Long Overdue’
U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli told Breitbart News exclusively on Monday that the federal lawsuit filed earlier against Los Angeles for its “sanctuary city” policies was “long overdue.”
“For too long Los Angeles has operated in direct conflict with federal immigration laws, and discriminated against federal authority. This lawsuit is long overdue,” Essayli told Breitbart News.
Fox News’ Bill Melugin broke the story of the lawsuit, in which the U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Los Angeles discriminates against the federal government, and federal law enforcement agencies, in barring them from conducting their work.
Melugin provided an excerpt from the lawsuit:
Sanctuary City laws and policies are designed to deliberately impede federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in those jurisdictions. The Los Angeles Ordinance and other policies intentionally discriminate against the Federal Government by treating federal immigration authorities differently than other law enforcement agents through access restrictions both to property and to individual detainees, by prohibiting contractors and sub-contractors from providing information, and by disfavoring federal criminal laws that the City of Los Angeles has decided not to comply with. The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment—as the challenged law and policies do—thereby discriminating against the Federal Government. Accordingly, the law and policies challenged here are invalid and should be enjoined.
L.A. only became a “sanctuary city,” officially, in November. In a deliberately provocative act, in reaction to President Donald Trump’s election victory earlier that month, the city council voted unanimously to become a sanctuary city on an official basis. (California has already been a “sanctuary state” for nearly a decade.)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been resisting cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), even providing cover for rioters who have attacked local and federal law enforcement by suggesting that civil unrest will stop when ICE stops conducting raids on illegal migrants in the city.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
