San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announced on Friday that the City and County of San Francisco are co-leading a lawsuit with Santa Clara County against the Trump administration’s latest directives targeting sanctuary jurisdictions, aiming to protect local control and public safety.

The lawsuit challenges Executive Order 14159 and recent US Department of Justice (DOJ) memos that threaten to withhold federal funds and even prosecute local officials for refusing to aid in federal immigration enforcement. San Francisco and Santa Clara County seek a declaration that the directives are unconstitutional and an injunction preventing their enforcement.

Chiu stated:

Since his first term, Donald Trump has tried different ways to coerce cities into doing the job of the federal government and carrying out federal immigration enforcement. This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution, and that is illegal or authoritarian… We still live in a democracy under the rule of law, and the federal government needs to follow the law. Local officials have a right to do their jobs without threats or interference from the federal government.

According to Chiu, the recent directives instruct federal agencies to investigate and potentially prosecute local authorities who maintain sanctuary policies, which prohibit or limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Sanctuary laws are designed to focus local law enforcement resources on crime prevention rather than immigration duties, a framework that supporters say fosters community trust and cooperation.

Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti emphasized that the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits the federal government from “commandeering” local law enforcement. He stated: “The federal government can’t commandeer our local government. They can’t commandeer our local resources, and they can’t commandeer our local law enforcement to help them carry out a vision of mass deportation.”

The lawsuit contends that the executive actions also violate other constitutional principles, including the Spending Clause, the separation of powers doctrine, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The lawsuit further alleges that the orders violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

In previous litigation against the Trump administration, San Francisco and Santa Clara County successfully challenged similar anti-sanctuary city measures. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in that case that attempts to impose immigration-enforcement conditions on unrelated federal funding were unconstitutional.

Chiu and LoPresti underscored that sanctuary policies strengthen public safety by fostering trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities. Under such policies, victims and witnesses of crime are more inclined to report incidents without fear of deportation or other immigration consequences.

LoPresti said:

We are striving to create a culture of trust and security within our communities, so that our residents know that they can come to the county when they are in need, or when they can be of help … Our non cooperation policies are designed to protect that trust and security, and the federal government can’t weaponize federal funding to bully us away from that commitment to trust and security.

Police chiefs’ associations in California have similarly stated that forcing local officers to double as federal immigration agents undermines their core mission of preventing and solving crime.

San Francisco and Santa Clara argue that billions of dollars in federal funding are at risk for essential services ranging from healthcare to public safety. Both counties rely heavily on these funds to operate public hospitals, social programs, and infrastructure projects, and Chiu noted that cutting off these resources would be “catastrophic.”

Several other cities and counties joined the lawsuit, including New Haven, Connecticut; Portland, Oregon; and King County, Washington. The number of participating jurisdictions is expected to increase as litigation continues. LoPresti stated: “We litigated before, and we prevailed. We are litigating again, and we will prevail again.”