The Federation for American Immigration Reform believes the federal government has every right to withhold funding from "sanctuary" entities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in spite of a ruling last week by Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge William Orrick.
Orrick stopped the Trump administration from denying or conditioning the allocation of federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions.
Trump issued several executive orders aimed at holding sanctuary entities accountable for failing to cooperate with federal deportation efforts.
Ira Mehlman is media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
"The federal government uses the lever of federal funding to get local jurisdictions to comply all the time. This is not anything unique to this one particular policy area. We've seen this such as trying to get states to impose speed limits on highways through the threat of withholding federal highway funds or backing. So, this is something that we've seen the federal government do in countless other administrations,” said Ira Mehlman, the media director for FAIR.
Mehlman says it also raises the question that the Trump administration has raised.
"Which is whether these local district court judges have the authority to stop policies nationwide or whether it should just be limited to their specific jurisdictions."
Wisconsin judge Hanna Dugan didn’t take on Trump from the bench but rather from elsewhere in the courthouse.
Dugan, of Milwaukee County Circuit Court, is accused of escorting Eduardo Flores-Ruiz out of her courtroom through a side door as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were seeking to arrest him.
"She, according to the complaint, became visibly angry when she learned that there were immigration officials there, and she directed her clerk to escort the suspect and his attorneys out the side door in order to try to evade arrest, which is obstruction,” Mehlman said.
Not above the law
There’s no special status awarded to judges, he said.
“She's in violation of the law. What she's is alleged to have done constitutes harboring, which is a criminal offense.”
In spite of Dugan’s alleged involvement, federal agents were able to chase down Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, facing three misdemeanor battery counts, not far from the courthouse.
“The judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media. “We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject – an illegal alien – to [initially] evade arrest.”
