San Francisco Judge Blocks Trump’s Sanctuary Cities Order

President Trump has already seen three immigration orders blocked by federal courts and has been stopped twice from instating a temporary travel ban for certain predominately Muslim countries.

“First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings,” Trump said in a tweet from his official Twitter account Wednesday. “See you in the Supreme Court!”

However, William Orrick III, a district court judge in San Francisco, was the one who blocked Trump’s sanctuary cities order, not the Ninth Circuit.

“Out of our very big country, with many choices, does everyone notice that both the ‘ban’ case and now the ‘sanctuary case’ is brought in the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%),” Trump tweeted. “They used to call this ‘judge shopping.’ Messy system.”

After the city of San Francisco and County of Santa Clara sued over Trump’s plan to withhold federal funding from localities which harbor illegal immigrants, Orrick issued an injunction against the Trump administration, which has been applied nationwide.

“Today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation,” the White House released in a statement on Tuesday.

San Francisco was the first city to sue over the executive order in January. At least five other local governments have sued since then. Some jurisdictions decided to back off from sanctuary-style policies in fear of losing essential funding.

It is estimated that San Francisco would lose over $1 billion in federal funding due to the executive order while Santa Clara claimed that about $1.7 billion could be lost.

“Because San Francisco took this president to court, we’ve been able to protect billions of dollars that fund lifesaving programs across this country,” Dennis Herrera, the San Francisco city attorney, said in a statement.

San Francisco argued that Trump’s executive order violated the constitution, as the trust would be lost between local authorities and immigrants if the city was forced to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

Courts are in place to prevent the president and an attorney general from disobeying or ignoring the Constitution, according to Herrera.

Los Angeles, Houston, and New York are some of the other known cities which present themselves as sanctuaries. In these cities, cooperation with federal immigration authorities is limited. Unauthorized immigrants from local jails aren’t often turned over and local police officers don’t always ask about immigration status.

“San Francisco, and cities like it, are putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens, and those city officials who authored these policies have the blood of dead Americans on their hands,” the White House’s statement said. “This San Francisco judge’s erroneous ruling is a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country, empowering the worst kind of human trafficking and sex trafficking, and putting thousands of innocent lives at risk.”

Featured Image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore