The Justice Department is directing its federal prosecutors to investigate any state or local officials who stand in the way of beefed-up enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration, according to a memo to the entire workforce obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Written by Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, the memo also says the department will return to the principle of charging defendants with the most serious crime it can prove, a staple position of Republican-led departments meant to remove a prosecutor’s discretion to charge a lower-level offense.
Much of the memo is centered on immigration enforcement. Bove wrote that prosecutors shall “take all steps necessary to protect the public and secure the American border by removing illegal aliens from the country and prosecuting illegal aliens for crimes” committed in U.S. jurisdiction.
The memo also suggests state and local officials who stand in the way of federal immigration enforcement could themselves come under scrutiny. It directs prosecutors to investigate any episodes in which state and local officials obstruct or impede federal functions.
The memo comes to light one day after attorneys general from 22 states have sued to block President Donald Trump’s move to end a century-old immigration policy known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status.
"The real question is, given the obviousness of this, why would Trump try to attack such a well-worn historic idea? Well, that's just Trump being Trump," says Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison which is part of the states filing the suit. "He's upset that other people get to be a part of America. He always says he wants to go after illegal immigration. Well, birthright citizenship is legal."
Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order amounts to a fulfillment of something he talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain. Twice previously, the U.S. Supreme Court has stopped challenges to the 14th Amendment.
"Black people were said that they could not be citizens," Ellison says. "So, when we passed the 14th Amendment, it was directly to refute that constitutional case and establish a new constitutional precedent of birthright citizenship."
As for enforcement of new policies, on Tuesday Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt told WCCO that while her office has yet to be contacted about the possibility of rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, she fully expects it to happen, and stands by her stance that is not part of their responsibility.
"We have not been asked and I anticipate we probably will. I will stand by that that is not part of our job, you know, we're gonna deal with it as the questions, the demands come but you know what? I think we can all agree when you look at Hennepin County and we look at the crimes that we're seeing right here, we're busy."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.