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Sanctuary Cities May Have Upper Hand in Fight Over Trump's Immigration Order

Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
The U.S. Bill of Rights from the National Archives and Records.

From Texas Standard:

The 10th Amendment, the Tea Party and sanctuary cities are three things that one wouldn’t imagine having much in common. But they do – perhaps now more than ever.

A few years ago conservatives pointed to the 10th Amendment, which safeguards states’ rights, as a bulwark against orders from the Obama administration.

Now that amendment is being used against them.

This week, President Donald Trump repeated his threat to pull federal funding to sanctuary cities. Mayors of those cities responded by citing the 10th Amendment in their vows to defy his immigration order.

  Lynn Rambo, law professor at Texas A&M University, says that the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state governments by compelling them to help enforce federal law.

“[Cities’] biggest concern under the 10th Amendment has to do with the federal government essentially getting the states to do its immigration enforcement work,” Rambo says.

Mayors are arguing that the federal government would be commandeering local law enforcement agencies by requiring them to assist in the deportation process.

Rambo says that mayors won’t be able to take this issue before a judge until there is an actual cutoff of funding or if a cutoff is imminent. For now, they’ll have to wait and see how Trump intends to cut federal funding.

“It’s unclear from the executive order how exactly this would take place,” she says of Trump’s threat. “And that’s part of the problem. President Trump is doing something that is really legislative in nature here, rather than executive.”

Trump’s threat also brings up other constitutional questions.

“There are other constitutional problems that have not gotten quite as much play with respect to how expressed these conditions for the funding have been [and] how connected they are to the purpose of the funds being given in the first place,” Rambo says.

Written by Molly Smith.

Rhonda joined KUT in late 2013 as producer for the station's new daily news program, Texas Standard. Rhonda will forever be known as the answer to the trivia question, “Who was the first full-time hire for The Texas Standard?” She’s an Iowa native who got her start in public radio at WFSU in Tallahassee, while getting her Master's Degree in Library Science at Florida State University. Prior to joining KUT and The Texas Standard, Rhonda was a producer for Wisconsin Public Radio.
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