Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and member of the USA Today board of contributors. Follow him on Twitter @RaulAReyes. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) "We have a problem." That is what Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a gathering of law enforcement officers in California on Wednesday, in announcing that the Trump administration was suing the state over its so-called sanctuary laws. Federal immigration law, Sessions emphasized, is the supreme law of the land. "But California, we have a problem," he said. "A series of actions and events have occurred here that directly and adversely impact the work of our federal officers."

There is a problem here -- only it is not the one that Sessions thinks it is. The problem is that the Trump administration is escalating its bullying of California and other states in a cynical, destructive way. Sessions' lawsuit against California is built on myths and deceptions.

The Trump administration is fighting California because the state passed three laws that the feds don't like. One limits state and local agencies' ability to share information about criminals or suspects with federal immigration officers, unless they have been convicted of a serious crime. Another bars local businesses from allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to examine employee records without a court order or a subpoena. The third gives California the right to inspect immigration detention centers within the states.

Sessions spoke as though California were brazenly defying federal law. "There is no nullification, there is no secession," he said. "Federal law is the supreme law of the land." No one disputes that. In fact, in US v. Arizona (2012), the lawsuit over Arizona's infamous "papers, please" law , the Supreme Court ruled that immigration enforcement was the jurisdiction of the federal government, not the states.

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