Informative article on Vox about the upcoming lawsuit:
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Sessions’ lawsuit, legally speaking, is about ensuring that the feds can use any tool in the toolbox of federal immigration enforcement policy, without any restrictions from progressive cities and states. Politically speaking, it’s the next phase in a battle the Trump administration and California are equally enthusiastic about having: an ongoing culture war between progressive politicians who feel a duty to make their immigrant residents feel as safe as possible, and an administration (and its backers) whose stated policy is that no unauthorized immigrant should feel safe.
The lawsuit is mostly a fight to let government employees and business owners cooperate with ICE if they want
The administration’s new lawsuit doesn’t address all of California’s restrictions on cooperation — including some of the “sanctuary” policies that Sessions and other Trump administration officials have complained the most about (like limits on when local jail officials can agree to hold unauthorized immigrants for 48 hours after they’d otherwise be released so that federal agents can pick them up).
Instead, it aims at pieces of 3 different laws California passed last year: one that strictly limits law-enforcement cooperation with ICE; one restricting what employers can do when ICE engages in workplace raids; and one about reviews of immigration detention facilities
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It's too much to post the whole article. It goes into detail about each of the three different laws:
SB 54 (California Values Act): The “sanctuary” law.
AB 103: The detention-review law.
AB 450: The workplace-raid law.
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The DOJ argues that these restrictions “have the purpose and effect of interfering with the enforcement of the [federal] prohibition on working without authorization.”
This is basically the heart of the lawsuit: that California passed laws that are designed to stop the federal government from enforcing its laws, and that’s not permissible under the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. (In a subplot, the lawsuit cites the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. US in 2012, which struck down parts of a state immigration enforcement law passed by Republicans who thought the Obama administration was shirking its duty on immigration.)
In the federal government’s view, “California has no lawful interest in assisting removable aliens to evade federal law enforcement.” But California, of course, argues it does: that protecting the safety and well-being of California residents means forcing ICE to meet higher standards of due process before engaging in actions that can affect not only unauthorized immigrants but legal immigrants and US citizens. And this is where the real divide lies.
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But picking a fight with Democratic politicians — especially in liberal-caricature California — on behalf of cops is the best possible frame for the Trump administration politically. Ever since the presidential primary, Trump’s gotten leverage out of attacking “sanctuary cities” for harboring criminals; it’s allowed him to use his favorite theme — that immigrants are criminal and dangerous — while attacking his political opponents.
The legal prospects of the new lawsuit aren’t very good in the short term — even if the DOJ prevails in the district court, it’ll have to go through the liberal (and presidentially antagonized) 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Politically, though, it’s less important that the Trump administration wins this fight than that it’s picking it at all — it’s reminding its base who the good guys and bad guys are.
Of course, that’s also true for the California government — it’s just that the “good guy” and “bad guy” labels are reversed. California has all but courted a lawsuit from the Trump administration. Attorney General Xavier Becerra left a promising career in the House of Representatives to lead the legal resistance on the West Coast.
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ration-law-doj