Attorney General Rob Bonta Says if Trump Ends Sanctuary City Funding, He Will Lose

After President Donald Trump announced this week that he plans to withhold funding from cities and states that have “sanctuary” immigration policies beginning next month, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bay Area cities are promising to take legal action should payments stop.

Bonta and Bay Area prosecutors said Wednesday that California has repeatedly won legal battles to block similar threats by the president during both of his administrations, and would do so again.

“This is a lawless repeat offender president who has lost on this issue multiple times already and will lose again,” he told KQED.

Trump made the threat on Tuesday amid escalating immigration crackdowns in Democrat-led cities, where three people have been shot by federal officials this month. In an address to the Detroit Economic Club, he said that beginning Feb. 1, his administration would withhold all payments to sanctuary cities and their states, which he said “protect criminals.”

“No more payments will be made by the federal government to states for their corrupt criminal protection centers known as sanctuary cities,” he reiterated in a post on social media on Wednesday. “All they do is breed crime and violence.”

The announcement echoes a pair of executive orders from last January, which said that the administration would take action to ensure that jurisdictions with sanctuary policies do not receive federal funding. A memorandum by Attorney General Pam Bondi in February reiterated that sentiment.

A San Francisco federal judge in April granted a preliminary injunction halting those orders, which was extended in August and expanded to more than 30 cities and counties.

The same judge in 2017 ruled that a similar Trump executive order was “unduly coercive” and violated the separation of powers, and permanently blocked him from withholding funds over cities’ sanctuary policies.

“Federal courts have held a number of times that our sanctuary policies are lawful,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, whose office is party to the suit filed earlier this year. “This administration has repeatedly tried to withhold funding or impose illegal funding conditions on our city and many others. We’ve already taken legal action to protect our federal funding, and we’re going to continue to do so.”

Chiu said the move feels like an attempt by the president to distract from “horrific actions” in Minneapolis, where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month while acting as a legal observer for immigrants in the city, according to Minnesota’s Attorney General.

Attorney General Kristi Noem, meanwhile, has said Good was carrying out actions that amounted to an “act of domestic terrorism” before she was shot, and Trump has made false claims about the events that led up to the incident.

Two others were shot by Border Patrol agents in Portland, Oregon, the following day, on Jan. 8, during an attempt to pull over their vehicle.

Chiu and Tony LoPresti, county counsel for Santa Clara County, both said that whether the cities launch further legal action will depend on whether Trump follows through on this week’s threats, and in what form.

While Santa Clara County doesn’t use “sanctuary” language specifically, it also has policies that assert its right not to use local resources to aid federal immigration enforcement.

“We are certainly going to ensure that we’re enforcing the injunctions that we have in place, and that we will continue as a county … to litigate our constitutional rights not to cooperate with the federal government and their immigration enforcement campaign,” LoPresti said.

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee called Trump’s announcement an attempt to “bully” sanctuary cities, and said that threats from Washington would not be effective.

Should the Trump administration begin withholding funds next month, Bonta said, the state is prepared to take legal action “within minutes.”

“We’ve got the arguments, we have the briefs, we have a legal strategy,” he said. “We just need to see how his general statements manifest into a specific action — what funding to what city for what issue.”

“Maybe it’ll be nothing, but we’re not counting on that. We believe he’s gonna do something, and whatever it is, we’ll be ready,” he continued.

KQED’s Tyche Hendricks contributed to this report.