A federal appeals court has denied pleas by a Washington state county government that claims it has the right to block ICE deportations of illegal migrants to satisfy its liberal “sanctuary” policies.
On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled against the “sanctuary” jurisdiction of King County, in Washington state, where county officials tried to prevent U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using a local airport to facilitate deportations.
King County officials insisted that since they were a so-called “sanctuary” county, they could legally stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using King County International Airport as a base to ship illegals out of the country.
The airport is close to a major ICE operations base outside of Seattle, and the office had been using the airport to facilitate deportations since 2012, however in 2019, King County Executive Dow Constantine doled out an executive order that made the airport off limits to ICE. The order caused ICE to shift its deportations elsewhere causing extra logistics and a corresponding rise in operating costs.
The then-Trump administration sued the county and maintained that deportation was a legal federal activity, and the county had no constitutional right to take away its use of an airport given to the county after WWII by the federal government and interfere in ICE deportation actions.
In the case The United States v King County, Trump’s administration cited the Supremacy Clause’s intergovernmental immunity doctrine and a World War II-era Instrument of Transfer agreement allowing the federal government to use the airport in King County, Just the News reported.
Now, in this month’s 29-page ruling, the three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with the federal government and ruled against the county and its citing of its “sanctuary” policies as a basis to stop deportations.
In the decision, the judges ruled that the federal government had Article III standing to sue King County and “had two related concrete and individualized injuries.” One of those injuries is “the inability to conduct the charter flights – which has increased ICE’s operational costs – constituted a de facto injury that affected the United States in a particularized, individual way.”
The court added that the second injury was that it was obvious that if there was no county order, ICE would continue using the airport and that the injury it sustains by the county’s ban of airport use is “likely, as opposed to merely speculative.”
The county’s order violated the intergovernmental immunity doctrine because it “improperly regulated the way in which the federal government transported noncitizen detainees by preventing ICE from using private FBO contractors at Boeing Field, and on its face discriminated against the United States by singling out the federal government and its contractors for unfavorable treatment.”
This court, which is usually a bastion of left-wingery, essentially laughed the King County case right out of court with its ruling which is filled with stark language taking King County to task for it obviously flawed take on the law.
This order is notable as it is a major chink in the armor of so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions that have thus far claimed they have an absolute right to interfere in immigration activities based on their supposition of “home rule,” or the idea they have a right to make their own local laws and regulations irrespective of federal rules and regulations.
This ruling could easily form as the basis to undermine a lot of the shady claims and rules put up by “sanctuary” cities, counties, and states, should those who oppose sanctuary policies choose to cite it at a precedent.
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