DOJ sues Rochester over sanctuary city policies

The U.S. Department of Justice is suing the city of Rochester, Mayor Malik Evans, the Rochester City Council, and Council President Miguel A. Melendez Jr. over the city’s sanctuary city policies.

The lawsuit was triggered by an incident on March 24 when Rochester Police officers responded to a call for assistance from federal law enforcement officers and Evans and other city officials subsequently criticized the local police involvement.

“To most Americans, that would look like law enforcement at its finest. But not to those leading the city of Rochester,” DOJ lawyers wrote in the complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

“Local political leaders and officials, including Mayor Malik Evans and City Council President Miguel Melendez, criticized the Rochester Police officers for doing the right thing, because responding to a call for backup and assisting federal law enforcement officers at the scene violated the city’s sanctuary city policies,” the DOJ wrote.

“This is a lawsuit to put an end to those policies,” the DOJ wrote.

Evans called the complaint “an exercise in political theater, not legal practice.”

“The city’s sanctuary city policy is legally sound and always has been — including during the entirety of the Trump administration’s first term,” Evans wrote in a statement emailed to the new media.

“The city fully intends to defend the legality of its policies, and to use this opportunity to hold the federal government to task and ensure that it does not commandeer local resources in violation of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment,” Evans wrote.

“The city of Rochester is committed to investing its resources on public safety for all, not doing the federal government’s work of immigration enforcement,” he wrote.

The United States is facing “a crisis of illegal immigration,” DOJ lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

Federal efforts to address the crisis “are hindered by sanctuary cities such as the city of Rochester, who refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities,” according to the suit.

The lawsuit seeks to have Rochester’s sanctuary city policies ruled invalid.

“Rochester’s sanctuary city laws and policies are illegal. Those laws and policies are designed to, and, in fact, do interfere with and discriminate against the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit claims the sanctuary city policies intentionally obstruct enforcement of immigration law.

In the aftermath of the March 24 incident, Evans made a public statement that Rochester police officers “do not help or participate in federal immigration activities.”

Under the city’s sanctuary city policy, Rochester police likewise “shall not stop, question, interrogate, investigate, or arrest an individual based solely on actual or suspected immigration or citizenship status.”

Rochester Police officers may not assist federal immigration officers unless they have a criminal arrest warrant or when there is reasonable cause to believe the person committed a federal crime. And city personnel cannot ask about immigration status unless needed for a criminal investigation.

The officers involved in the March 24 incident were removed from road patrol and required to receive additional training before returning to full duty.

“The law and policies are an obstacle to the federal government’s enforcement of the immigration laws and discriminate against federal immigration enforcement,” the suit claims.

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