Los Angeles officials have sued the federal government over Department of Justice grant application rules that are aimed at cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities, the city attorney said Tuesday.

“We’re filing a lawsuit against the (Donald) Trump administration … to seek an injunction to block the imposition of unconstitutional civil immigration conditions on a vital crime-fighting grant,” City Attorney Mike Feuer said at a news conference at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

The lawsuit was filed in the Bay Area, where the city also is requesting to join San Francisco and other jurisdictions in litigation against the federal government, officials said.

The new conditions were recently added to the Justice Department’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, which the city receives annually.

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The Los Angeles area could lose out on the federal grant, anticipated to be worth about $1.9 million in the upcoming year, if the city is unable to comply with new grant rules announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on July 25.

Feuer has said local officials will have a difficult time meeting the requirement in which a city must notify the Department of Homeland Security at least 48 hours before it plans to release “an alien in the jurisdiction’s custody” wanted by U.S. immigration officials, usually as part of what is known as a “detainer” request.

The city rarely holds anyone in custody for longer than 48 hours, and to do so without a warrant or “probable cause” could violate the detainee’s constitutional rights, Feuer contended.

Those detainer requests often come to the city many hours into a person’s stay in a Los Angeles jail, according to the city attorney.

Feuer on Tuesday described the administration’s plan as “overreaching.”

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The executive branch does not have the power to impose the new immigration conditions, and only Congress can make major changes to rules for the grant, which is handed out each year to cities and local law enforcement agencies that meet a criteria formula, Feuer said.

“For 20 years, Los Angeles has applied (for) and received funding for this program,” Feuer noted. “This case is about protecting public safety and … about the limits on the power of the Trump administration, limits on the executive branch to impose its will.”

“Federal grants to protect public safety are not weapons,” he said, referring to Trump’s statements earlier this year that he would use such funding against cities that in “his view didn’t comport with his version of immigration policy in this country.”

Justice Department spokesman Devin M. O’Malley said that violent crime in Los Angeles is up since 2014, so it is “baffling that the city would challenge policies designed to keep residents of L.A. safer, especially from the scourge of transnational gang activity,” such as those associated with groups like MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang.

O’Malley said that the goal of “reversing sanctuary city policies is about more than just enforcing federal immigration law by detaining criminals here illegally — it’s about re-establishing a culture of law and order, where crimes are punished and people are deterred from committing them.”

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Feuer said his office worked on the lawsuit closely with Covington & Burling LLP, a law firm that is offering pro bono help to the city. Eric Holder, a former U.S. attorney general under the administration of President Barack Obama, is a partner at the firm, and Mitch Kamin serves as the attorney there that is working on the L.A. case.

Earlier this month, Feuer argued that the federal government has had a practice of explicitly stating that the 48-hour notification requirement would only apply if it is possible or “practicable” for the city, but the new grant rules do not make that clear.

Feuer warned that the city could be forced to take legal action against the federal government if Department of Justice officials failed to respond to an Aug. 7 letter seeking “written guidance that unambiguously clarifies” the rule by the end of the week.

The grant application is due Sept. 5, but federal officials have yet to respond with the clarification request, Feuer told reporters late last week.

Attorneys for the Justice Department initially told him they were “hoping to issue a refinement,” then postponed providing the clarification to later this week, Feuer said.

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The city now has a short time frame to apply for the grant, which is used to help pay for Community Law Enforcement and Recovery, or CLEAR, a joint-agency program that was started in 1997 to curb gang-related violence. The program operates in nine areas in the city, including the LAPD’s Foothill Division in the San Fernando Valley, northeast Los Angeles, South Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

Los Angeles’ lawsuit also follows a legal challenge by Chicago on the new Byrne justice grant rules targeting cities with so-called “sanctuary policies.

Since assuming office in January, Trump has vowed to take federal funds away from cities with “sanctuary” policies aimed at protecting undocumented immigrants, particularly policies that may block communication and cooperation between local and federal authorities about someone’s immigration status.