WASHINGTON – The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has submitted a brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island in a case brought against a federal agency by Illinois and a group of other sanctuary states. The plaintiff states seek an injunction against the Trump Administration’s withdrawal of federal funds unless the states rescind their policies of noncooperation with federal immigration law enforcement.
In its brief, IRLI shows that the states’ policies go far beyond neutral noncooperation. By forbidding state officials from providing information on release dates of criminal alien inmates when asked, or letting federal agents into state jails to interview such inmates and assume federal custody in a controlled and safe environment, the policies deliberately set up obstacles to congressional purposes behind the immigration laws, and thus violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
What this unlawfulness means is that the states should be thrown out of court for lack of standing to sue. The courts can recognize no claimed “injury” that consists of the discontinuance of unlawful government policies, or the loss of funds due to the continuation of such policies. Nor can the states claim that these “injuries” constitute irreparable harm, a showing of which is necessary to obtain an injunction.
“It is a misunderstanding of federalism to think that states can block federal agents from doing their jobs,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “There are 500 some sanctuary jurisdictions in the country, and counting. That is a large part of the territory of the United States. Jurisdictions trying to stop the federal government from enforcing federal laws over wide swaths of its territory are really attempting to nullify federal laws they don’t like. They have no authority to do that in our system.”
The case is Illinois v. Federal Emergency Management Agency, No. 1:25-cv-00206 (D.R.I.).
