Trump administration sues upstate New York city over “sanctuary” policies

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The Trump administration is suing the city of Rochester, New York, over its policies as a “sanctuary city,” saying they violate the Constitution by deliberately impeding immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit comes after Rochester elected leaders said local police officers had violated city policy prohibiting their involvement in immigration activities when they assisted Border Patrol at a traffic stop last month and helped handcuff the vehicle’s occupants.

“To most Americans, that would look like law enforcement at its finest,” the lawsuit said. “But not to those leading the city of Rochester.”

The April 24 filing in U.S. District Court seeks to have the upstate New York city’s policies declared invalid. The lawsuit was filed on the same day that a federal judge in California barred the Trump administration from denying federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions.

Rochester established itself as a sanctuary city in 1986 and reaffirmed the designation during Donald Trump’s first term with a unanimously passed City Council resolution. The 2017 resolution says the police “shall not engage in certain activities solely for the purpose of enforcing federal immigration laws, including not inquiring about the immigration status” of crime victims or witnesses unless needed for a criminal investigation. It also prohibits city employees from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.

Rochester sits less than 10 miles from Lake Ontario, which straddles the U.S.-Canadian border.

In a statement Friday, Rochester officials called the policies “legally sound” and said they would use the legal challenge “to hold the federal government to task and ensure that it does not commandeer local resources in violation of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.”

“The City of Rochester is committed to investing its resources in public safety for all, not doing the federal government’s work of immigration enforcement,” the statement from Mayor Malik Evans, City Council President Miguel Meléndez Jr. and the city said.

“On its face,” the statement said, “the complaint is an exercise in political theater, not legal practice.”

The legal action stemmed from a March 24 traffic stop in Rochester, during which Rochester police officers responded to an emergency request for backup from Border Patrol.

Rochester police are permitted to respond to such requests to keep the scene safe, the mayor said, but were wrong to engage in the enforcement of immigration laws.

“From what I understand, officers on scene verbally directed the occupants to get out of the vehicle and assisted in placing handcuffs on them,” Evans said at a news conference two days later. He said the police chief had initiated an internal investigation and that every city officer would receive more training on the policy.