On Feb. 7, New Haven, Connecticut, joined San Francisco and Santa Clara County, California, in suing the Trump Administration after it issued an executive order on Day One that instructed the Department of Justice to pause and possibly rescind billions of dollars in federal funding for cities that have protections in place for undocumented immigrants. There are now 21 jurisdictions that have joined the lawsuit.
New Haven is no stranger to taking the lead on immigration issues. In 2007, the coastal New England city became the first jurisdiction in the country to issue a municipal ID card to residents regardless of immigration status.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, who issued a “Welcoming City” executive order upon taking office in January 2020. That order expanded an earlier directive to police and to all city employees. The executive order barred city workers from inquiring about any resident’s immigration status in their interactions, unless required by law. That meant that, while employees could not interfere with federal immigration officials, they also were not permitted to assist them in identifying or arresting undocumented immigrants. Here Mayor Elicker explains that the lawsuit relies mostly on the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states, any powers not explicitly given to the federal government by the Constitution belong to the individual states or to the people.
MAYOR JUSTIN ELICKER: The lawsuit argues that the executive order violates the 10th Amendment separation of powers, the spending clause, the due process clause and the Administration Procedures Act. The foundation of it is around the 10th Amendment, our 10th Amendment protections. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the federal actions unlawful and enjoin the federal government from enforcing the challenge portions. And you know, specifically the threat of the executive order is to cut funding to municipalities that have some sort of welcoming city or sanctuary city order ordinance. That’s the wrong thing to do, period. But it would dramatically impact our public safety in our city because we rely on particularly a lot of Department of Justice funds to help support initiatives to keep people safe in our community.
MELINDA TUHUS: The article I read said $6.4 million in Department of Justice Grants. There’s a lot of other federal funding, too, that comes to the cities, including New Haven. Would they also be at risk or just these funds?
MAYOR JUSTIN ELICKER: We don’t really know. The Trump administration seems hell bent on going as far as possible to steamroll anyone in their way and cut as much as possible of important services to people across the nation. The executive order was more specific about DOJ funding and Department of Homeland Security funding, but there are other initiatives. I understand there’s a house bill that is focused on cutting all funding,
MELINDA TUHUS: Mayor Justin Elicker, I’ve seen two responses in the local media coverage of New Haven joining this lawsuit. One point of view is that New Haven should not draw attention to itself in this way, that it will likely make the Trump administration come down even harder or faster on our welcoming city and that no good can come of it. The other point of view is that Trump is cutting federal jobs and federal funds that go to cities and states in any case. So it’s better to fight back. Can you respond to both of those positions?
MAYOR JUSTIN ELICKER: I thought a lot about whether we should join the lawsuit and raise our head and follow our values and be a part of pushing back or if we should be more quiet and not draw attention to ourselves. And you know, after some, a good amount of thought, I, I feel quite strongly that that’s the wrong approach. That we should all raise our heads, all push back and all fight for our values and talk about what’s wrong right now. I mean, if we are complicit, if we obey in advance, if we try to hide under a rock we’ll be complicit in what’s going on at the federal level. And they’re coming for us regardless. It’s probably a matter of time before they do raids in all of our cities. And if a few of us raise our heads, there’s a potential that a couple of us get our heads chopped off. If all of us raise our heads, it’s a lot harder to do that.
The other thing I’d say is that every city that has some welcoming city or sanctuary city order ordinance will benefit from this lawsuit in the end. And it did not seem fair to me to allow a handful of municipalities like San Francisco carry our water, that we should be a part of the lawsuit ourselves because we shouldn’t benefiting from something that someone else does a lot of hard work on and take some of the hits on while we stand on the sidelines. I also just add that we are not supportive of the idea of immigrants who are violent people being in our community. And I think that that is something that is over and over repeated by the Trump administration, misrepresented by the Trump administration about a lot of the cities that are either sanctuary cities or welcoming cities, is this idea that we’re harboring criminals and evil people. That is factually not correct. That is just a lie.
If there are violent criminals in our community, we will hold ’em accountable. And in cases where there’s a violent criminal in our community, we’ll work with ICE to make sure that they’re deported. The only thing I’d add is that I think there’s a question in everyone’s mind right now around the nation of whether the Trump administration is actually gonna follow what the courts say, which is deeply, deeply disturbing that the president of the United States would not follow what the courts say, but we’re optimistic that we will prevail in this case.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
