Donald Trump's Department of Justice filed suit against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and several other city officials over the city's status as a sanctuary for illegal aliens.
The suit says that the Constitution gives the national government “well-established, pre-eminent and pre-emptive authority to regulate immigration.”
“New York City has long been at the vanguard of interfering with enforcing this country’s immigration laws,” the administration said in its suit. “Its history as a sanctuary city dates back to 1989, and its efforts to thwart federal immigration enforcement have only intensified since.”
In 1989, the city council passed several measures that established the outlines of what later became known as a "sanctuary city," limiting cooperation with the federal government on immigration matters. In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed several bills "that all but stopped the police and jail officials from helping federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deport undocumented immigrants," according to the New York Times.
"The job of a mayor is to protect the safety of every single person in their city — and that’s exactly what Mayor Adams has worked to do every day for nearly four years," Adams' press secretary, Kayla Mamelak Altus, told Fox News Digital. "Keeping New Yorkers safe also means making sure they feel safe, and Mayor Adams has been clear: No one should be afraid to dial 911, send their kids to school, or go to the hospital, and no New Yorker should feel forced to hide in the shadows."
People "hide in the shadows" because they violated the law by crossing the border and living illegally in the city. New York City and other sanctuary states and cities make a mockery of immigration enforcement laws, making it a political issue instead of a law enforcement measure.
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The argument by sanctuary city advocates is that refusing to enforce the law makes illegal immigrants more likely to cooperate with the police on law enforcement matters. There are a few studies that reflect that point of view, buttressing the argument that illegals will report crimes to police because they feel "safer."
Other studies are less certain of the correlation. A Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report says, "To the extent that we can compare different parts of the country, we found no evidence that the level of such cooperation affects immigrant reporting of crime."
"In fact, in smaller communities in the American South, which tend to cooperate the most with immigration authorities, crimes against immigrants are reported to police at significantly higher rates than crimes in larger cities in the Northeast and West, where most sanctuary jurisdictions are concentrated," the CIS report concluded.
Whether sanctuary city advocates are right or wrong is not the issue to be addressed in the DOJ lawsuit. The issue is whether the states' and cities' obstruction of federal immigration law enforcement violates the Constitution's "supremacy clause" by forcing states to bow to the will of the federal government on national matters.
"Sanctuary cities are only sanctuaries for criminals. President Trump promised to Make America Safe Again and deport criminal illegal aliens," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "But sanctuary cities, like NYC, are working in direct opposition to the mandate that President Trump was elected to fulfill, and American citizens are paying the price. The Trump Administration will not tolerate local politicians interfering in the enforcement of federal immigration laws."
This government lawsuit might have a shot at being successful because of the way that states and cities are now enforcing their local laws. Cooperating with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office has degenerated to the point where a case can be made that city officials are obstructing federal law enforcement efforts by making it impossible for ICE to perform its duties. ICE detainers on violent criminals are not all being honored, as sometimes, the dangerous criminal is released before ICE can get to the jail to pick them up.
U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliatakis (R-N.Y.) is backing the suit, calling sanctuary polices "misguided" and "costly and dangerous."
Restoring public safety in our communities starts with New York City cooperating with ICE’s detainer requests. Failing to do keeps dangerous criminals on our streets. https://t.co/683xNu9RM8
— Office of Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (@RepNicole) July 23, 2025
Rep. Malliotakis made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that showed more than 16,000 crimes were committed by thousands of illegal aliens who were living in hotels and shelters at taxpayer expense.
The Justice Department cited New York's policy that prohibits its Department of Corrections from honoring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers, which requests that federal immigration authorities be notified upon the release of a criminal illegal immigrant from jail.
The New York Police Department was subject to a similar provision, the lawsuit states. In 2014, the city further resisted cooperation with ICE, including adding an amendment to its sanctuary city policy that immigration detainers would not be honored without a warrant issued by an Article III judge (or magistrate judge) and unless the subject of the detainer had been convicted of a "violent or serious" crime within the past five years or was a possible match on the federal terrorist watch list.
This is a case guaranteed to end up before the Supreme Court. The justices will have a golden opportunity to clarify, once and for all, who controls immigration in the United States and the extent to which states must cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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