California defiant as Trump administration, new AG Bondi threaten funding to ‘sanctuary cities’
California officials responded defiantly Friday to an order from new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that could freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in public safety grants to sanctuary cities and states refusing to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Two California jurisdictions, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, filed a federal lawsuit to stop the policy, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the policy is unenforceable under a court ruling made during Trump’s last administration.
“Our state laws do not conflict with any federal law and courts have already ruled that attempting to freeze key grants over this issue is illegal,” said Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo.
Several other cities — including Portland, Oregon, and New Haven, Connecticut — joined the suit in San Francisco federal court. All are sanctuary jurisdictions, which have passed laws and ordinances regulating the ways in which local agencies can cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts, and restricting the places where such enforcement efforts are allowed.
Bondi’s order, which came in the form of a memorandum issued Wednesday on her first day in office, directed employees at the U.S. Department of Justice to pause the distribution of all funds until a review is conducted to ensure that city, county or state governments are cooperating with federal immigration sweeps. The memorandum also directs the DOJ to engage in prosecutions under laws meant to prevent fraud and criminal conspiracies against the U.S. government.
Bondi quickly followed that order with a federal lawsuit filed against the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and Cook County challenging sanctuary laws and accusing the state’s governor and other officials of thwarting federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Trump campaigned on promises to deport millions of undocumented migrants living in the U.S., and swiftly moved to begin detentions. The crackdown has terrified people in immigrant communities and swamped law offices with requests for help and advice.
“This is the federal government illegally asserting a right it does not have, telling cities how to use their resources, and commandeering local law enforcement,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who is leading the municipalities’ lawsuit. “This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution.”
Sacramento, which received at least $1.5 million in DOJ funding between 2021 and 2024, is not involved in the cities’ lawsuit, a spokesperson said, but may file a brief in support of it. But leaders remained committed to keeping the city’s sanctuary status, even under the threat of losing federal funding.
“It is the moral tradition of our nation and our city to protect immigrants and refugees,” Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty said in a statement. “Sacramento will uphold this legacy.”
As of Friday afternoon, Councilmember Eric Guerra said the city had not been cut off from its federal DOJ funding. All told, the city receives funding from active federal grants of about $3.2 million, about half of which is yet to be spent, said city spokesperson Jennifer Singer.
Guerra said the bigger issue will be how the state is affected, given that it receives large amounts of federal funding which trickles down to jurisdictions like Sacramento. “All the jurisdictions would be affected if funding is cut off,” he said.
In Southern California, a spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said its sanctuary protections were in compliance with federal law. The city’s ordinance prohibits the use of its resources or personnel to be used for immigration enforcement or to cooperate with immigration officials.
“We will stand against any attempt to cut critical public safety funding for Los Angeles,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass’ office. “Los Angeles is a proud city of immigrants and we will continue to protect all Angelenos.”
A safe haven for refugees
The sanctuary city movement began in the 1980s, as a way to protect migrants fleeing the violence and authoritarian regimes in Central America. Sacramento was among the earliest adopters, passing a resolution in 1985 that asked Congress to recognize people fleeing El Salvador and Guatemala as political refugees. It declared that the city would not use its resources to investigate or reveal their residency status, and would not deny benefits to such families.
Numerous cities followed suit and, in 2017, the state of California passed Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, which repealed a law requiring state law enforcement officials to inform immigration authorities if they arrested undocumented people for drug crimes, and banned state and local law enforcement agencies from investigating people for their immigration status.
The law states that immigrants are “valuable and essential members of the California community,” and prohibits law enforcement agencies from detaining people based on immigration status, even if requested to do so by another agency.
But such policies have for years drawn the ire of anti-immigration activists, and Trump campaigned against sanctuary cities both during his first presidential run in 2016 and this latest campaign in 2024. During his first administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions also tried to claw back funding for cities that called themselves sanctuaries and did not fully cooperate with deportation efforts.
Millions in statewide funding at stake
California stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in funding at the state level alone if Bondi’s order is carried out. In 2021, the state received $297 million in federal DOJ funding and, as recently as 2018, California received $640 million in public safety funding from the agency, a 2024 state report shows.
That does not include millions more dispersed directly to cities and counties. In 2021, for example, the agency awarded San Francisco County $6.25 million and the city of Sacramento $1.875 million to hire more police officers. Since 2021, the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs has given San Francisco nearly $8 million for initiatives ranging from preventing school violence to purchasing body cameras. In addition to Sacramento city officials being awarded $1.5 million during that span, Sacramento County received nearly $9 million in similar funding.
Janna Haynes, a spokesperson for the county, said officials were reviewing the new order and said the possibility of services being defunded was “troubling.” The county was “working to maintain a continuity of service to our residents, even as we determine the impact to our programs,” Haynes said.
Still, Newsom’s office characterized Bondi’s order as a “messaging exercise.”
Crofts-Pelayo pointed to a 2020 federal appeals court ruling that stopped Trump’s first administration from pulling back funding from California because of its sanctuary laws, which the Newsom administration believes applies in this case.
This story was originally published February 8, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "California defiant as Trump administration, new AG Bondi threaten funding to ‘sanctuary cities’."
