A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Department of Justice can refuse to give crime-fighting money to cities and states that consider themselves sanctuaries and refuse to share information with federal immigration authorities.
The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals was a defeat for New York City and seven states — Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Washington. They sued after the Justice Department said in 2017 that it would not award grants from a federal program to local governments that withheld information about undocumented immigrants in their jails.
Three other federal appeals courts have come to the opposite conclusion, ruling that the government was wrong to withhold the grants from sanctuary jurisdictions including San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Federal law has long prohibited local governments from refusing to share information about the citizenship status of people they arrest or jail after convictions. Immigration agents say they need to know who in local jails is in the U.S. illegally, so those people can be deported after they’ve served their sentences.
But many cities and states have declined to provide that data or to allow immigration agents to visit their jails. They argue that in order to maintain the cooperation of immigrant communities, police must not be seen as extensions of federal immigration authorities.