U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo on President Trump’s Executive Order regarding sanctuary cities
SAN FRANCISCO (May 22, 2017) — City Attorney Dennis Herrera today issued the following statement about U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ May 22, 2017 guidance memo on Executive Order 13768 regarding sanctuary jurisdictions:
This guidance memo is coming from an administration that has a different explanation for things seemingly every time you turn around. The memo is a self-serving document. We can’t rely on it, and we can’t trust it. It is trying to blunt the resounding loss the Trump administration suffered on our motion for a preliminary injunction, but the memo doesn’t change the constitutional problems of the executive order. That order tried to take away all federal funding from sanctuary cities, and we can’t trust this administration not to make good on its threats.
The bottom line is this is about local governments knowing what’s best when it comes to using their limited law enforcement resources to protect their community.
The federal government can’t hold a gun to the head of cities and counties and force them to spend their limited police resources on immigration enforcement. The federal government can’t force local governments to do its job for it. We want to use our law enforcement resources to fight violent crime, not take hard-working mothers away from their children.
The case is: City and County of San Francisco v. Donald J. Trump, et al., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Case No. 3:17-cv-00485, filed Jan. 31, 2017. Additional documentation from the case is available on the City Attorney’s website at: httpss://www.sfcityattorney.org