In ongoing crusade against LA, Trump sues city and mayor over sanctuary policy

It was seven months ago, at the end of November 2024, that Los Angeles was declared a sanctuary city. This meant that the use of local resources to assist federal forces in pursuing immigrants was prohibited. The newly elected Donald Trump never liked the policy, and as soon as he took office, he denounced Chicago and Illinois for implementing it. Now, his sights are set on Los Angeles, the unofficial capital of the West Coast and the second largest city in the United States. On Monday, the Department of Justice decided to sue the city itself, its city council, the council president, and Mayor Karen Bass for interfering with and discriminating against the federal government’s enforcement of federal immigration law.

The lawsuit, released by the Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s office, claims that policies associated with so-called sanctuary cities in Los Angeles are unlawful under federal law. “The upshot of Los Angeles’ refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities has, since June 6, 2025, has been lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism. The situation became so dire that the Federal Government deployed the California National Guard and United States Marines to quell the chaos.”

The suit alludes to the riots that took place the second week of June, when hundreds of people took to the streets throughout the city, especially downtown, to protest the more than 1,600 random arrests that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been making at work centers, meeting places, parking lots, and commercial establishments throughout the county of approximately 10 million people.

The lawsuit states that the country is “facing a crisis of illegal immigration.” It refers to one of Trump’s first executive orders, which he signed on the day of his inauguration, in which he declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico to crack down on illegal immigration. It accuses Los Angeles of refusing both cooperation and information-sharing, even when requested, with federal authorities by becoming a sanctuary city. “The City of Los Angeles’ Sanctuary City laws are illegal,” says the 21-page lawsuit, dated Monday. “ Those laws and policies are designed to and in fact do interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”

“The express purpose of Los Angeles’ Sanctuary City law is to thwart Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) from carrying out their statutory obligations as directed by Congress,” the lawsuit reads. “The council members who passed the bill have publicly declared as much. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez proclaimed that “[w]e refuse to stand by and let Donald Trump deport [illegal immigrants].” Los Angeles has been standing up to Trump and ICE for months over the deportations, carried out randomly, and which are sowing fear among hundreds of people, whether legally in the country or not.

According to the complaint, filed in Los Angeles court, the city is obstructing federal policies, leading to “lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism” since June 6. The reality is that the protests lasted barely a week and were complicated precisely by the fact that Washington deployed 2,000 National Guard troops, who did little but set a precedent. Both California Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass claimed that the troops were not necessary and that the state had not requested them.

The riots were limited in time and space and ended with a large, entirely peaceful demonstration on June 14, which drew more than 30,000 people in the city center alone and hundreds of thousands more across the county.

At this time, Mayor Bass—whose term will be up for election in November 2026—has not responded to the complaint. On Tuesday, the City Council will meet to try to prioritize “immediate legal action” to protect Los Angeles residents from random or racially motivated detention.

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