by Joel B. Pollak26 Jan 2017
California’s “sanctuary city” mayors are vowing to resist President Donald Trump’s effort to make them obey immigration laws, after he signed
an executive order Wednesday cutting off federal funds to “jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply.”
That has California’s sanctuary city mayors in a state of panic — and
open rebellion against the new Trump administration.
Sanctuary city mayors and state officials appear to be pinning their hopes on the constitutional principle that the federal government cannot compel or commandeer state and local governments to carry out its functions.
However, they will struggle to find an answer for
their own arguments from just a few years ago that immigration law is an area of exclusive federal jurisdiction that supersedes state and local law. Democrats made that argument passionately against Arizona’s SB 1070, which allowed local law enforcement officers to ask people whom they stopped for another legitimate purpose to prove that they were legally resident in the United States. (The law was largely struck down at the Supreme Court.)
Furthermore, there is nothing states and municipalities can do about the power of the federal government over its own funds.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/26/californias-sanctuary-city-mayors-vow-resist-trump-executive-orders/
