Speaker 1: The Trump administration is taking aim at sanctuary cities, using
Speaker 1: four billion dollars in federal grants as its ammunition, but
Speaker 1: mayors in sanctuary cities from New York to Los Angeles
Speaker 1: say they won't be bullied. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is
Speaker 1: threatened to strip cities of funds if they don't pledge
Speaker 1: they're complying with the law that bars officials from withholding
Speaker 1: information about a person's immigration status from Immigrations and Customs
Speaker 1: Enforcement or ICE. I strongly urge our nation states and
Speaker 1: cities and counties to consider carefully the harm they are
Speaker 1: doing to their citizens by refusing to enforce our immigration laws,
Speaker 1: and to rethink these policies. Sessions announcement was a repetition
Speaker 1: of an executive order signed by President Trump five days
Speaker 1: after taking office, and of a policy the Justice Department
Speaker 1: announced last July during the Obama administration, joining us our
Speaker 1: David Rifkin, a partner at Baker Hostetler and Leon fres Go,
Speaker 1: a partnered Hollandon Knight and former Deputy A G for
Speaker 1: the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Justice Department. Leon.
Speaker 1: Sanctuary cities often adopt rules that prohibit their police officers
Speaker 1: from even asking people about their immigration status, so it
Speaker 1: isn't available to share with the federal government. Are those
Speaker 1: cities in violation of this law? Well, the statute, which
Speaker 1: is a USC thirteen seventy three, says that if you
Speaker 1: do not cooperate with a request from the federal government
Speaker 1: for information, you are in violation. So the affirmative act
Speaker 1: of not asking about someone's immigration status would not put
Speaker 1: you in violation of a USC thirteen seventy three. What
Speaker 1: would put you in violation is if the federal government
Speaker 1: actually made a request for information to you and you
Speaker 1: refuse that request. So so just to be clear, there's
Speaker 1: nothing that these sanctuary cities who are doing that are
Speaker 1: doing wrong or against the law. Correct. No, the the
Speaker 1: actual text of the UFC thirteen seventy three says you
Speaker 1: have to refuse a request for information about immigration status
Speaker 1: from the federal government to be in violation of that.
Speaker 1: And so what happens most of the time, the way
Speaker 1: this controversy arises is that ice will ask a local
Speaker 1: or state jail, can you please give me the information
Speaker 1: of at what time and on what day you're going
Speaker 1: to release x individual? And then the state and locality
Speaker 1: doesn't give that time, and so then now I have
Speaker 1: to go find that person instead of being able to
Speaker 1: locate the person on the date and time of their
Speaker 1: relief from jail. David, the step that the Attorney General
Speaker 1: announced yesterday, I'm a little unclear as to whether it
Speaker 1: is just enforcing a pre existing rule that was actually
Speaker 1: put in place by the Obama administration, or something considerably
Speaker 1: broader than that. What's your take. I think it's appearance
Speaker 1: a little unclear. I think that there are sufficient grounds
Speaker 1: and they disagree with my colleague to take view that
Speaker 1: a willful failure to collect this information coupled. Look, we
Speaker 1: have to be real here, uh. When a number of
Speaker 1: cities and other jurisdictions have conspicuously prohibited the employees from
Speaker 1: collecting this information, justifying it publicly at the time it
Speaker 1: was done so they don't have to provide it to defense,
Speaker 1: it's it's a little uh, it's a little bizarre. And
Speaker 1: I hear that it doesn't violate a statute that requires
Speaker 1: sharing of information if you read the statutory language broadly,
Speaker 1: this is certainly a way to avoid or evade at
Speaker 1: point number one, point number two. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: other things sanctuary cities are doing okay relative to not
Speaker 1: cooperating with detainers, which channel Sessions mentioned a number of
Speaker 1: whom involved individuals with most horrific uh convictions or at
Speaker 1: least suspicions most horrific conduct. And I don't understand one thing. Look,
Speaker 1: there's clearly because of fiddles and principles, the anti corrosion
Speaker 1: and that comment doing principles. Uh, the federal government cannot
Speaker 1: force states to spend their resources and personnelity enforced federal law,
Speaker 1: and they cannot curse them. Okay, they should have a
Speaker 1: courage of their convictions. They should not seek to obtain
Speaker 1: federal funds uh, and they should stand on on their
Speaker 1: belief that they want to be open and they want
Speaker 1: to have lots of undocumented aliens. That would be an
Speaker 1: honorable way to proceed doing both, which is continuing to
Speaker 1: sort of uh feed at the federal trough and squeal
Speaker 1: then the funds are being denied while affirming their right
Speaker 1: to have a separate immigration policy. David, let's let Leon
Speaker 1: get in here for a moment. Leon, do you agree
Speaker 1: with that? Well, first, I don't agree that there's any
Speaker 1: legal requirement whatsoever for a city to affirmatively do anything.
Speaker 1: The only legal requirement that exists in the statute is
Speaker 1: that a city has to respond to a request for
Speaker 1: information about immigration status that is given by the federal government. Now,
Speaker 1: having said that, there are cities that do refused to
Speaker 1: do that, and I do think there's a question of
Speaker 1: whether a city should think that that is a proper
Speaker 1: use of it's of its of its resources, given that
Speaker 1: there might be better you know, this might be the
Speaker 1: ideal population to focus your removal resources. But having said that,
Speaker 1: the idea of a detainer having for a city or
Speaker 1: local a locality to keep someone in detention, to hold
Speaker 1: them when they would otherwise be released so that ICE
Speaker 1: can come pick them up. The problem is this exposes
Speaker 1: cities to lawsuits all the time because many times these
Speaker 1: detainers end up being improperly issued. The person is a
Speaker 1: US citizen, or the person has otherwise some status that
Speaker 1: shouldn't get them detained. And what happens is when that
Speaker 1: locality gets sued for holding the person unlawfully, ICE doesn't
Speaker 1: come in and identify these folks for the cost of
Speaker 1: that detention. And so that's the problem. These cities are
Speaker 1: caught betwixt and between do we listen to ICE and
Speaker 1: potentially have ourselves subject to civil litigation, or do we
Speaker 1: not listen to ICE and be called the sanctuary city.
Speaker 1: And so that part of it is the problem that
Speaker 1: too many people aren't discussing. David, I'm guessing you want
Speaker 1: to respond, we have about a minute. It's disingenuous because
Speaker 1: lots and lots of those cities are proudly from the
Speaker 1: intent to define immigration law. And let me ask my
Speaker 1: colleague one simple question. Are you aware of the the
Speaker 1: instances where don't involve uh A lawful aliens at all,
Speaker 1: but one jurisdiction is asking another jurisdiction to hold somebody
Speaker 1: while they're seeking a warrant. To realize how much law
Speaker 1: enforcement cooperation transpires into different sphere, We'll live in a
Speaker 1: world where you know, an American who's who has been
Speaker 1: accused of rape but for whom a warrant has not
Speaker 1: been obtained, has a better chance of being held temporarily
Speaker 1: and naver jurisdiction and a law for ailien. That's that's absurd,
Speaker 1: that's leon thirty seconds. Rep The difference is that the
Speaker 1: detention there is criminal detention. Here, the detention would be
Speaker 1: for the purpose of removal, and if you can't actually
Speaker 1: remove the human being, then that's atention is considered unlawful.
Speaker 1: And then it's the city that's stuck with the bill
Speaker 1: for the lawsuit. That's the problem. I'm not saying whether
Speaker 1: I agree with the policy or not. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that the law currently doesn't allow the city to get
Speaker 1: indemnified when the federal government makes a mistake. All Right,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a long debate that we're going to
Speaker 1: be having a lot in the future. I want to
Speaker 1: thank you both. That's David Riston, a partner at Baker
Speaker 1: Hostetler and Leon Fresco. He's a partner at Holland and Night.
Speaker 1: That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Law, thanks
Speaker 1: to our producer David Sutterman and our technical director Mark Sinniss.
Speaker 1: Couching coming up, Bloomberg Markets with Carol Master and Corey
Speaker 1: Johnson is starting and they will be talking about a
Speaker 1: variety of things, including uh Trump executive orders to cancel
Speaker 1: Obama policies,