What Are Sanctuary Cities and Why Is Trump Targeting Them?

As President Donald Trump and his second Administration work to implement their promised aggressive shift in immigration policy across the country, sanctuary cities have once again taken center stage.

The Executive Orders on immigration signed by Trump in his first few weeks in office include efforts to redefine birthright citizenship, suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and declare a national emergency at the border.

Beyond this, Trump’s actions, and subsequent legal battles, have focused specifically on what are known as “sanctuary cities” or “sanctuary jurisdictions.”

In an Executive Order signed by Trump on his first day in office, titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” he asserts that the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security should ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions—which the Executive Order says “seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations”—do not receive federal funding. 

Trump tried something similar in 2017. During his first week in office he signed an Executive Order stating jurisdictions that did not comply with federal immigration operations by the Trump Administration would not receive federal funds. Numerous cities and counties then sued, and some courts repeatedly upheld the legality of sanctuary laws.

Read More: What Donald Trump’s Win Means For Immigration

This time, the Executive Order also asserts that jurisdictions and local officials can and should be criminally or civilly investigated, or prosecuted, if they adhere to sanctuary policies and do not assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their new immigration polices, something San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu says is indicative of Trump “doubling down” and escalating his former attempts.

Here’s everything you need to know about sanctuary cities and the battle stewing between some of those places and the Trump Administration.

There is no legal or universal definition of the phrase, but sanctuary cities are commonly regarded as jurisdictions which have policies that limit or define the extent to which a local/state government will share information with federal immigration law officers.

Mark Fleming, associate director of the National Immigrant Justice Center’s Federal Litigation Project, says the term “sanctuary cities” is somewhat of a “misnomer,” considering they are in reference to a variety of jurisdictions and states throughout the U.S., with a wide range of laws in place to limit their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. For example, one sanctuary policy of New York City bars city officials from sharing information about immigrants unless it is regarding a criminal matter or there is written permission by an individual immigrant to do so. 

Democrats have long championed these policies as a way to create safe and welcoming environments for immigrants.

Jill Habig, Founder and President of Public Rights Project—a national nonprofit that works with state and local governments to enforce civil rights—is currently working with Portland to fight back against Trump’s legal and political fight with sanctuary cities. She says sanctuary cities have adopted these laws in order to create trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement.

“If immigrants fear that their local police are going to turn them over to ICE, then they may not report a crime that's affecting everyone in their neighborhood,” Habig says. “That’s really the principle that cities have been deploying for decades: to say, ‘We want to make sure everyone in the community feels safe and that they feel comfortable, that they can access city services without fear of deportation.’ That actually makes cities safer.”

In a 2017 study by the Center for American Progress—conducted during Trump’s first term—the center reported that there were, on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties compared to nonsanctuary counties. A 2020 Cambridge University study also found that when local law enforcement works closely with ICE, undocumented immigrants are less likely to report crimes, which “undermines public safety,” one of the researchers said to the Hill.   

“There's often an assumption that sanctuary city policies are just about an ideological perspective on immigrant rights, but it's also supported just by sound policy around public safety,” Habig says.

A January 2025 statement from the California Police Chiefs Association—which “represents all 334 municipal police chiefs in the State of California”—echoes this desire for cooperation between immigrant communities and law enforcement. 

The association said that local law enforcement should not “shield dangerous individuals or restrict our agencies and officers from investigating and apprehending serious or violent offenders.” However, at the same time, they argue that sanctuary laws in place “to ensure the safeguarding of every undocumented person in need of assistance…must remain in place.”

Some Republicans state that these sanctuary policies allow for local law enforcement to work against ICE operations to gain custody of undocumented immigrants. “Sanctuary cities release thousands of criminal aliens out of our prisons and jails and back into our communities,” Trump said in 2018. “They go into those sanctuary cities when they see them; they go there because they feel they’re safe. And in many cases, they are very bad actors.”

“Sanctuary jurisdictions aren’t going to stop what we’re going to do,” Thomas Homan, Trump’s former acting director of ICE and new “border czar” said in an interview with NewsNation in December.

Fleming and Habig maintain, though, that the crackdowns occurring against large groups , is not the majority of deportations that ICE and Trump will try to complete in his time in office—something he himself has admitted to.

“They're trying to do this sleight of hand where they connect all immigration enforcement to the things that the American people broadly support, which is border security and border safety, and the deportation of folks who've been convicted of violent crimes… they’re trying to connect that with deportation of people who've been here for years, if not decades, who have children here, families, businesses, they pay taxes,” Habig says.

Since Trump’s Jan. 20 Executive Order, the fight against sanctuary cities has only escalated, and the Secretaries of several departments have responded in kind.

On Feb. 5, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo to the Justice Department on “Sanctuary Jurisdiction Directives,” emphasizing Trump’s order and stating that the DOJ will “exercise its own authority to impose any conditions of funding that does not violate applicable constitutional or statutory limitations,” and threatening to prosecute local officials over immigration enforcement.  

Newly-instated Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, issued a Department of Transportation order in January that threatened to shift federal transportation funding away from local governments that don’t cooperate..

On Feb. 6, the DOJ went a step further and sued the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, accusing the authorities of impeding on Trump’s immigration enforcement policies. 

Beyond Chicago—Boston, Denver, and New York City also received letters from Republican Representative James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, stating that he is launching an investigation into sanctuary jurisdictions. The mayors of the four cities were invited to testify.

“Sanctuary jurisdictions and their misguided and obstructionist policies hinder the ability of federal law enforcement officers to effectuate safe arrests and remove dangerous criminals from American communities, making Americans less safe,” Comer wrote.

Habig says that Trump and his Administration’s insistence on targeting sanctuary cities is because of his “aggressive and ambitious” deportation goals, such goals which are already stretching the resource limits of the federal government.

Read More: What to Know About the Court Cases Over Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order

“The federal government cannot do what it wants to do without the help of local governments,” Habig says. “They do not have enough resources without local police departments to actually find and deport every janitor, nanny, farm worker, or local business owner that they need to deport if they're going to reach the numbers that they want to reach.”

There are around 20,000 ICE agents employed across the United States, according to ICE’s website, whereas there are more than 18,000 local police departments in the United States, employing more than one million officers.

On Feb. 7, several sanctuary cities, led by San Francisco and including Portland, New Haven, Santa Clara and Kings County, sued the Trump Administration, alleging that they are unlawfully coercing local officials to bend to their will, and calling for the courts to “check this abuse of power.” 

“We prevailed on these issues during Trump 1.0. We believe that federal judges who adhere to the rule of law will be consistent with the law,” Chiu says, who as City Attorney of San Francisco, is leading the effort. During Trump’s first presidency, the city sued Trump over similar policies, and the Ninth Circuit agreed with them. The Supreme Court then declined to hear the case.

“From our perspective, the Trump Administration's actions clearly violate the law, so we're not expecting a difference. What he's doing is as unconstitutional and illegal as it was eight years ago,” Chiu says.

Chiu bases the legality of sanctuary cities on the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which separates power between the states and federal government. 

Chiu says Trump’s actions violate the 10th Amendment, the Separation of Powers Doctrine, the Spending Clause, the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedures Act.

ICE detainer requests are typically not criminal, since criminal detainers are largely issued only if there are charges pending in another jurisdiction against a person currently serving a criminal sentence. Habig points out that this is why courts have held local governments liable for Fourth Amendment violations in the past when they have honored ICE detailer requests without probable cause. 

“They’re trying to put local governments in a bind where it's: either you violate the Fourth Amendment and may expose yourself to liability for holding people illegally, or you give up your federal funding, and, you know, face retaliation by the federal government,” Habig says.