President Donald Trump is combating again against states that refuse to help his immigration agenda after a wave of court docket losses, with a sequence of recent lawsuits that tee up untested authorized questions concerning the energy of state and federal governments.
The Justice Department final week filed 4 lawsuits against states that have refused to approve unmarked license plates for the automobiles of federal immigration brokers.
Federal judges have mostly dominated against Trump’s marketing campaign to drive states and cities to cooperate with the president’s mass deportation efforts. Most lately, a federal judge rejected a Trump challenge to a Boston metropolis ordinance that bars native legislation enforcement from offering sure immigrant info and different sorts of help to Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers.
That determination was a minimum of the fourth ruling dismissing a case introduced in Trump’s second time period against Democratic-led cities or states, for insurance policies that restrict what cooperation is given to federal brokers in immigration enforcement
The Trump administration is operating into the identical authorized obstacles with the instances that it did in his first time period, but is urgent on, together with in appeals.
“I think the administrative feels, politically, that this is a winning issue,” mentioned Harry Sandick, an legal professional who was concerned in sanctuary metropolis authorized fights against Trump throughout his first time period. “This is an administration that is willing to lose in court, as they have done repeatedly, if they believe there is a political benefit for pressing a particular rule or policy.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an interview with Sean Hannity posted Tuesday, blamed the federal district judges who have been first to listen to the instances introduced by Trump against the insurance policies.
The “challenge,” Blanche mentioned, “with these sanctuary city lawsuits, is that we have to file them in the sanctuary city, where the bench is terrible – for the most part – on these issues.”
Though Blanche expressed confidence the Supreme Court would ultimately agree with Trump, the excessive court docket declined to take up a serious case against California’s sanctuary legal guidelines that his administration lost throughout his first time period.
However, extra novel authorized questions are rising from how Democratic officers try to erect new sorts of hurdles to the president’s immigration crackdown. Disputes over masks bans for federal brokers and the denials of license plates could be extra favorable authorized floor for Trump, who has already secured a big win this spring against a state anti-masking legislation for ICE officers.
“Some sanctuary policies are, ‘Hey, we’re not going to help the feds, but we’re not going to interfere with how the feds are going to do their job,’” mentioned Matt Crapo, director of litigation for Federation of Immigration Reform, which helps stricter immigration legal guidelines and has backed the administration in among the present instances. “And then the newer, more recent cases are, states are actually trying to interfere or tell the feds how to do their job.”
When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, his administration picked up the place it left off in its largely unsuccessful anti-sanctuary campaign in court docket.
A February 2025 lawsuit against Chicago and Illinois was the primary of a minimum of 9 authorized challenges introduced by the second Trump administration focusing on greater than a dozen states or native jurisdictions
That litigation largely offers with prohibitions blocking state or native officers from sharing sure info with the feds – together with dates of launch for undocumented immigrants who’ve been arrested or detained by native authorities.
Other challenged insurance policies instruct native authorities to not honor detainer agreements, requests from the feds that individuals within the custody of native authorities stay in detention after their launch date to allow them to be picked up for immigration proceedings. Some additionally embrace blanket bans on expending assets to help in civil immigration enforcement.
“Sanctuary City laws and policies are designed to deliberately impede federal immigration officers’ ability to carry out their responsibilities in those jurisdictions,” the Justice Department mentioned in a June 2025 lawsuit against Los Angeles, which a decide is anticipated to rule on within the coming weeks.
About half of these instances are nonetheless pending, but the district courts that have issued rulings have sided with the cities and states, handing DOJ defeats in Illinois, New York, Colorado and now Boston. The administration has been interesting these rulings.
Some of the choices have turned on the anticommandeering doctrine, which says the US authorities can’t drive states to hold out its enforcement of federal regimes, but courts have additionally discovered at instances no precise battle between federal legislation and the native insurance policies.
“The administration is likely to lose in areas where they’re trying to force the states to affirmatively do something that Congress does not require the states to do,” mentioned Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota Law School professor who served in President George W. Bush’s White House Counsel’s Office.
During the primary Trump administration, the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals relied on related logic to facet with California within the case Trump unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Supreme Court to take.
Trump’s efforts to strain sanctuary jurisdictions by withholding federal funding have additionally been repeatedly defeated in court docket, but his administration has pressed ahead with the tactic.
The Trump administration’s relentless assaults on sanctuary jurisdictions exemplifies a broader technique of “governing through intimidations and negotiation,” mentioned Anil Kalhan, a Drexel University Kline School of Law professor.
“The fact that there may or may not be legal merits is beside the point,” Kalhan mentioned, evaluating the immigration enforcement fights with states to how this administration has additionally pushed on universities and the authorized group.
The authorized battle over state cooperation in immigration enforcement is headed to extra unsure territory due to how the battles on the bottom escalated within the final yr.
“The surge changed everything,” mentioned Rick Su, University of North Carolina School of Law professor specializing in immigration and federalism. Boosted by an enormous inflow of funding from Congress, the Trump administration flooded cities that had resisted serving to in its deportation efforts with federal brokers, which in flip prompted states to attempt new methods to protect their residents.
States have described their measures – typically geared toward bringing extra transparency to how immigration brokers are finishing up their mission – as mandatory for safeguarding their residents and throughout the realm of the policing energy the Constitution offers the states. The Justice Department, in the meantime, has accused states of creating legislation enforcement officers susceptible to surveillance and harassment.
Regardless, the brand new wave of the litigation difficult these measures poses questions not simply answered by present precedents.
“The sanctuary cities cases currently are very similar to what it was in Trump 1, and I’m not surprised [by the results] there,” Ilya Somin, a George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law professor, mentioned. “On some of these other issues, things are more complicated.”
Trump’s arguments against the brand new legal guidelines level to Constitutional prohibitions on states regulating the best way federal brokers carry out their authorities capabilities and on legal guidelines that discriminate against the federal authorities.
The administration secured court docket orders blocking California legal guidelines that barred face masks for federal brokers in most circumstances, and that required them to put on markers or badges displaying their identification. But it’s unclear whether or not judges who’re reviewing related legal guidelines handed in Connecticut and New Jersey will come down the identical means, Su mentioned, as states that have handed legal guidelines for the reason that California rulings have adjusted the measures in response.
The terrain is much more muddled across the new lawsuits the Justice Department filed against Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington and Maine for denying sure federal brokers the confidential plates.
On the one facet is the argument that states are discriminating against the feds. But on the opposite facet, states can declare that the administration is demanding that they take affirmative steps – by issuing the plates – to help in a federal operation.
“Not to say that any of these other cases will be easy, but I think this actually straddles the two sides,” Su mentioned.