“Seattle will not be bullied by this White House or this administration and today we are taking legal action against President Trump’s unconstitutional order,” said Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. | Getty Seattle sues Trump over 'sanctuary cities'

Seattle filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday, charging that President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening funding for “sanctuary cities” is “unconstitutional and ambiguous,” and violates the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

Mayors and police chiefs from around the country gathered in Washington on Wednesday to meet with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and complain about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ warning that cities that do not fully comply with immigration laws could see tens of millions in federal funding disappear.


Pulling funding would lead to a spike in crime, mayors have argued, and would be a punishment for not breaking any laws — they say the law does not require municipal authorities to report immigration status to the federal government, and that anyway, the term “sanctuary city” is too broad to account for each city’s individual approach to undocumented immigrants.

They argue that the chilling effect has already led to immigrants being too scared to report crimes and instilled unnecessary fear.

“Seattle will not be bullied by this White House or this administration, and today we are taking legal action against President Trump’s unconstitutional order,” said Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, announcing the suit. “We have the law on our side: The federal government cannot compel our police department to enforce federal immigration law and cannot use our federal dollars to coerce Seattle into turning our backs on our immigrant and refugee communities. We simply won’t do it.”

Murray did not attend the mayors’ meeting with Kelly in Washington, D.C. But after that meeting on Wednesday, DHS spokesman David Lapan said the administration is aware that lawsuits might be coming, but hadn’t done advance preparation for them, despite expectations of being taken to court.

“As you’d imagine, every day there are potential suits against the department for any number of things, so we generally wait to see the facts as they come forward,” Lapan said.

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, the Republican president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said he believed that DHS is starting to understand the problems with attempting the kind of crackdown the executive order seems to project.

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“Police chiefs and police departments are pretty much in alignment in how things have been going and the way things are executed today, and I think Secretary Kelly is in alignment with that,” Cornett said after the meeting.

But he said he’s open to joining lawsuits, either as the mayor of his own city or the conference president, depending on what the administration demands in terms of detainment.

“Yeah, there might be constitutional issues, especially on the containment side,” Cornett said.

The lawsuit charges: “The City of Seattle and our welcoming city policies do not violate federal law. The Executive Order calls for localities to cooperate with the federal government and share information. City employees are directed to cooperate with, not hinder, federal actions; however, City employees are prohibited from inquiring into immigration status. The City doesn’t not prohibit information sharing, but instead limits the collection of information.”

But city officials appear to be reveling in taunting Trump.

“I hope,” Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said in a statement, “the president will refrain from tweeting his legal opinion before our Courts have an opportunity to do so.”