ICYMI: VICTORY FOR CALIFORNIA’S “SANCTUARY STATE” LAW IN FEDERAL COURT

Los Angeles, CA – On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez (a George W. Bush appointee) granted California’s motion to dismiss Sessions challenge of SB 54 (“The California VALUES Act, Sen de León). This decision comes less than a week after the same judge denied the Trump Administration’s request to enjoin SB 54, finding the law to be a “permissible exercise[] of California’s sovereign power.”

The victory is noteworthy because it comes on the heels of recent national study showing that local sanctuary policies are preventing Trump from hitting interior deportation levels experienced during the Obama Administration. Moreover, the policy helps propel growing demands to #AbolishICE and decriminalize immigration.

When Sessions launched his attack against SB 54, he did so with great fanfare, enlisting a coordinated propaganda campaign w/ right wing media and hate groups. Now that California has prevailed so powerfully at the District Court against Sessions’ baseless lawsuit, there has been relative silence by the same media outlets that onced obsessed about the story.

Chris Newman, NDLON Legal Director, said: “It used to be said that immigration laws were broken, and only congress could fix them. It is now clear that immigration laws are unjust, and congress itself is broken. The good news is that state and local lawmakers have the legal authority to enact policies that stop Trump’s deportation plans in their tracks. In challenging SB54 so publicly, Jeff Sessions did the deportation abolitionist movement a favor by removing any doubt about the legality of so-called sanctuary policies.”

Bloomberg: California Beats Trump’s Legal Attack on Sanctuary Laws

“A federal judge in Sacramento dismissed most of a lawsuit by the Trump administration attacking California’s trio of sanctuary laws aimed at protecting the state’s undocumented and immigrant community.”

Sacramento Bee: Federal judge rejects Trump lawsuit against California’s sanctuary state law

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