Federal judge warns Trump can't sidestep his order with latest sanctuary city play

A federal judge warned the Trump administration that the president’s latest executive order targeting sanctuary cities doesn’t sidestep a previous order halting similar executive action. 

U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick, an Obama appointee, sought to clarify the extent of his previous preliminary injunction in a new order filed on Friday. Judge Orrick contended that President Trump’s latest executive order, which in part targeted federal funding for several sanctuary cities, doesn’t nullify his previous injunction. 

“At this early moment in the case, it is incumbent upon me to clarify the core purpose of the Preliminary Injunction: to ensure that litigation over how federal funding is allocated to the Cities and Counties is not driven by coercion and remains within the parameters of the United States Constitution,” Judge Orrick wrote. 

Just days before Mr. Trump signed the latest order targeting sanctuary cities, Judge Orrick issued a preliminary injunction to stop a pair of executive orders that threatened to halt all federal funds for jurisdictions that run afoul of federal immigration policies. 

Mr. Trump’s latest executive order, Executive Order 14,287, which he signed late last month, required that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws. 

The order stipulated that if sanctuary cities don’t make changes to comply with federal law, Ms. Bondi and Ms. Noem have the authority to “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures to end these violations and bring such jurisdictions into compliance with the laws of the United States.” 

Among those remedies is the ability to pinpoint federal funding that could be halted in response to locales that identify as sanctuary cities. 

Judge Orrick wrote that his latest order was in response to an additional suit brought by cities and counties that argued the White House’s executive action “repackages its predecessors’ unconstitutional funding threats.” 

While there were portions of the order that the judge contended didn’t run afoul of the law, the threat toward federal funding made it too similar to the previous orders that had been halted. 

“In light of all these considerations, I clarify that neither Executive Order 14,287 nor any other Government action that postdates the Preliminary Injunction can be used as an end run around the Preliminary Injunction Order,” he said.