Posted on 08/08/2019 8:39:58 AM PDT by jazusamo
Full title:Feds can’t withhold public safety grants for Oregon, city of Portland based on sanctuary law, judge rules
A judge has barred the Trump administration from withholding public safety grants from the state and the city of Portland over Oregon’s sanctuary law that directs police not to help federal agents enforce immigration policies.
U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane also said the federal government can’t impose immigration-related conditions on the grant awards.
McShane, who is seated in Eugene, issued his 44-page decision late Wednesday in a case brought in November by Gov. Kate Brown, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and the city against President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General William Barr.
He found that two federal statutes unconstitutionally ban local and state governments and agencies from enacting laws or policies that limit communication with federal officials about immigration or someone’s citizenship status.
McShane ruled the statutes, identified as Sections 1373 and 1644 of the federal code, violate the 10th Amendment, which says any power not expressly given to the federal government falls to the states or their people.
Since 2017, the federal government has placed restrictions on Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grants, known as JAG. The grants provide money to states, cities, counties and tribes for criminal justice personnel, training and equipment.
The conditions say the grant recipients must allow immigration agents access to prisons or jails , must give advance notice to federal officials when prisoners wanted on immigration detainers are to be released, and must certify that they’re complying with the federal statutes.
But McShane said Oregon and Portland “would, under any of these circumstances, risk public safety by eroding trust with immigrant communities or abandoning critical law enforcement initiatives funded by the Byrne JAG Program.”
He granted a permanent injunction and ordered the federal government to give the grants to Oregon for fiscal 2017 and 2018 that it withheld, with no conditions or penalties – a total of almost $5 million.
“The President of the United States and his Attorney General seek to advance their policy priorities by pressuring states and localities to comply with two immigration-related laws and by withholding federal funds from jurisdictions which refuse to assist immigration authorities,’”the judge noted.
McShane agreed with lawyers for the state and city, who argued the federal statutes are “unconstitutional intrusions upon their legislative independence” and that the funding conditions are contrary to the intent of Congress.
“Instances when the Attorney General may ‘withhold or re-allocate’ Byrne JAG funds were carefully delineated by Congress. When Congress wanted grantees to engage in or refrain from certain types of conduct — even information sharing — it provided for specific and measured penalties,” the judge wrote. “If Congress had shared the same concerns about grantees disclosing immigration-related information, it could have enacted analogous penalties. But it did not.’’
The state had expected to receive $2,034,945 from the grants for 2017 and $2,092,704 for 2018, while Portland expected to receive $385,515 for 2017 and $391,694 for 2018.
But the state didn’t receive notice of the grant awards for either year until last month because the U.S. Justice Department expressed concerns about the state’s sanctuary law. The state law bars local law enforcement from helping federal officials identify or detain anyone solely for violating immigration law.
Although the Justice Department made the money available to the state in July, the state can’t accept or draw from the money without risking penalties due to the sanctuary law, according to court records.
The city of Portland received its 2017 award last October but has yet to receive its 2018 award. It also would risk penalties if it accepted and used the money.
The Trump administration argued that the Justice Department’s pressure on states and municipalities to repeal their allegedly incompatible laws and policies “are essential to a properly functioning system of federal immigration laws,’’ according to court records.
Until 2017, the state had received the federal grants annually since the program’s creation in 2005, using more than $26 million to support programs for mental health treatment, technology improvement and drug treatment and enforcement. The state would like to use the 2017 and 2018 money to support specialty courts for drugs crimes or mental health cases or nonviolent felony offenders as well as to provide assistance to local crime victims.
Portland also had received the money every year until 2017, using it to buy bulletproof vests and special-threat plates for officers, acquire tactical medical kits, install GPS systems in its cars and add two victim advocates to the Police Bureau’s sex crimes unit. The city also has distributed some of the money to Multnomah County and Gresham to support a neighborhood prosecutor or an additional probation/parole officer.
McShane’s ruling mirrors similar ones by federal judges elsewhere in the country.
In December, for example, a federal judge in New York issued a permanent injunction barring immigration conditions on the grants for New York state, New Jersey, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York City. Last October, a federal judge in California also ruled that the grant conditions were unconstitutional.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled a year ago that Trump’s order to withhold federal grant money based on state sanctuary laws violates separation of power principles that gave spending power to Congress. But the same appeals court ruled last month in favor of the Trump administration’s immigration conditions for other federal police grants.
Where in the Constitution does it say that 1800+ unelected judges have more authority than the President? And why does this crap never happen to a Democrat?
Every government grant or contract has stipulations. Want to do business with the government and you better break out boxes of pens to fill in all the boxes ensuring that all of the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed.
Obammy 2013 appointee,, suhprize suhprize..
No Senate vote to boot.. What a Judge!!
https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/mcshane-michael-jerome
Tell me again why I should bow to Federal Gun Law?
Looks like it, doesn’t it.
It seems it’s up to the whims of a federal judge now.
The ironic difference between Arizona and Oregon is that in fact the Arizona law enforcement was seeking to ENFORCE Federal law, not to undermine it!
>Yeah sanctuary cities are ILLEGAL.
As is robbing the taxpayers for ‘grants’ to the State(s).
Unfort., nobody is talking about correcting that anytime in the near future.
Course, I don’t see Pres. Trump doing his JOB in this instance by sending in the DOJ & Fed. marshalls to arrest & prosecute all the govt employees for breaking the Law
>
So now the states can have their own immigration laws. Until we get a Democrat president. Then the shoe’ll be on the other foot like it was with Obama and the State of Arizona’s governor. Remember that one with the face-off on the tarmac? In that one federal law trumped state law. No judge interfered. These b$%tards get to butter their bread on both sides.
>
Well, it’ll be a FEW more *weeks* before Congress gets off its @$$, I mean vacation. THEN, the (R)N(C) can begin impeachment proceeding to get ‘im yanked for judicial over-reach.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAha. Sorry, I tried to hold it in as best I could.
Yes, he is a District Judge and of what Circuit?
Shifty eyed moonbat.
Just start arresting these governors, mayors, and city council members who pass these illegal sanctuary proclamations.
The federal government includes the Congress and this judge says the law Congress wrote doesn't allow the Executive to withhold the money.
I hadn’t realized the Obama judges were so big on states’ rights.
Just tell them the check is in the mail!
Nominated by Barack Obama on January 4, 2013, to a seat vacated by Michael Robert Hogan. Confirmed by the Senate on May 20, 2013,
Not that it would have made any difference if he hadn't been. The next nominee would have been just as bad. Remember the Republican-controlled Senate never really denied the Kenyanesian Usurper anything he asked for. Afeered they'd be labeled as raciss.
Just bury the grant money in a pile of red tape and slow the money transfer for years.
Ignore the prick.
Refraining from giving away money is not robbery.
It is taking a pass on giving out funds to a city that has gone rogue.
Where do you think a lot of that money will go?
It will go to pay for services to illegals.
Now it might not go there directly, but other funds will go there, and those funds will be replaced by the grant money.
It’s the same game California plays all the time. They demand higher taxes to pay for roads, then transfer the original highway funds to other pet projects.
I now wonder how deep his commitment is to that fact?
Bump!
“Another day, another 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling headed for the dustbin of history.”
Another gift from the OBUMSTER,a GAY guy whose close friends (4 of them) died of AIDS,and yet has ‘adopted’a nephew to raise alng with his present ‘partner’...all should be lost in dustbin of history.
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