Justice Department names and shames sanctuary jurisdictions

The Justice Department named and shamed sanctuary jurisdictions Tuesday, publishing its first list of 12 states, four counties and 19 cities it said try to thwart migrant deportations.

The list is much slimmer than one released — then quickly withdrawn — by Homeland Security earlier this year. It suggests a more carefully targeted approach, naming jurisdictions whose efforts stray over the line from noncooperation to trying to stymie immigration officers.

The list could also become a road map for future legal action. Indeed, the department has already filed lawsuits against many of the places on the list.

“Sanctuary policies impede law enforcement and put American citizens at risk by design,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “The Department of Justice will continue bringing litigation against sanctuary jurisdictions and work closely with the Department of Homeland Security to eradicate these harmful policies around the country.”

Locally, the District of Columbia made the list, as did Baltimore County.

Nationally, the list includes some of the most vocal sanctuaries, such as Democratic-run states New York, California and Illinois, plus the cities of Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Boston.

Homeland Security published its list in late May, naming about 600 states, cities and counties. Just days later, it was taken down after furious local leaders insisted they’d been wrongly included.

Three months later, the list remains offline.

Ms. Bondi took a more surgical and thorough approach than Homeland Security and publicly listed nine factors judging sanctuaries.

Among them were blocking deportation officers from access to illegal immigrant criminals in jail, training local officials on how to avoid cooperation, refusing to honor deportation detainer requests and using local taxpayer money to support migrants with welfare, health coverage or legal assistance.

Jurisdictions were also penalized for laws or ordinances that formalized their noncooperation or leaders who boasted about refusing to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sanctuaries exploded during the first Trump administration, but the tide appears to have turned in recent months.

North Carolina’s Legislature last week enacted a statewide sanctuary ban, and in Kentucky, Louisville officials rescinded their sanctuary policy.

Meanwhile, states such as Florida and Texas have enacted legislation pushing local officials to embrace more proactive cooperation with ICE by signing up for 287(g) agreements to assist with deportations.

But the legal war against sanctuaries hasn’t fared as well.

A federal judge last month tossed out Ms. Bondi’s lawsuit against Illinois, Chicago and Cook County over their sanctuary policies, saying the 10th Amendment protects their right to refuse assistance to the feds.

“If the state, county and city cannot control whether and how their employees share information with the federal government, they cannot affirmatively opt out of enforcing federal immigration laws. This conflicts with the guiding principle of anticommandeering: knowing and voluntary cooperation,” wrote Judge Lindsay Jenkins, a Biden appointee to the court in Illinois.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that its list shouldn’t be considered exhaustive — that more names will be added as the department gets more information.

In 2017, the department issued warnings to 29 jurisdictions about their laws. About half the names on that target list made Tuesday’s sanctuary list.

The full new list includes:

— The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

— Baltimore County in Maryland, Cook County in Illinois, and San Diego and San Francisco counties in California.

— The cities of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Berkeley, California; Boston; Chicago; Denver; East Lansing, Michigan; Los Angeles; New Orleans; New York; Hoboken, Newark and Patterson in New Jersey; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; Rochester, New York; Seattle; San Francisco and Washington.