Chicago will sue the Trump administration on Monday over threats to withhold public safety grant money from so-called sanctuary cities, the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, announced on Sunday.



The federal lawsuit, which escalates a nationwide pushback against a federal immigration crackdown, comes less than two weeks after the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced that the justice department would strip cities of certain grant funds unless they agreed to allow authorities unlimited access to local jails and to provide 48 hours’ notice before releasing anyone wanted for immigration violations.

“Chicago will not let our police officers become political pawns in a debate,” Emanuel, a Democrat and a former White House chief of staff to Barack Obama, said at a news conference.

“Chicago will not let our residents have their fundamental rights isolated and violated. And Chicago will never relinquish our status as a welcoming city.”

Emanuel said the lawsuit would prevent the Trump administration from setting a precedent that could be used to target other funding.

The program in question, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, provides money to hundreds of cities across the country. The Trump administration has requested $380m in such funding next year.

Chicago, a regular target of criticism from Donald Trump because of its murder rate, expected to receive $3.2m this year and planned to devote most of it to police vehicles.

Under Trump and Sessions, the federal government has vowed to crack down on immigration and has repeatedly sought to punish sanctuary cities, which generally offer safe harbor to undocumented migrants and often do not use municipal resources to enforce federal immigration laws.

Dozens of local governments and cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, have joined the growing “sanctuary” movement.

Chicago’s lawsuit will among other arguments contend that the US government cannot “commandeer local law enforcement to carry out federal immigration law functions”, top city lawyer Ed Siskel said.

In response to the Chicago suit, the justice department cited comments by Sessions last week saying sanctuary cities “make all of us less safe” and said more Chicagoans were murdered last year than residents of Los Angeles and New York combined.

Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement: “It’s especially tragic that the mayor is less concerned with that staggering figure than he is spending time and taxpayer money protecting criminal aliens and putting Chicago’s law enforcement at greater risk.”

Police and city officials in sanctuary cities have said deporting undocumented migrants who are not accused of serious crimes harms public safety by discouraging migrants from coming forward to report crimes.

Chicago’s lawsuit is the first to challenge the department over the Byrne program, though city officials said they were in contact with other cities. California attorney general Xavier Becerra is considering a similar lawsuit, the Sacramento Bee has reported.

The Trump administration has already faced legal battles over its sanctuary city policies. Last month, a US judge refused to revisit a court ruling that blocked Trump’s January executive order denying broader federal funds to such jurisdictions, in a case filed by San Francisco and the California county of Santa Clara.