Judge blocks Trump from withholding funds from Los Angeles, other sanctuary cities

By Dietrich Knauth and Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -A U.S. federal judge on Friday blocked Donald Trump's administration from withholding federal funding from more than 30 so-called sanctuary jurisdictions including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston and Chicago that have declined to cooperate with the Republican president's hardline immigration crackdown.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick expanded an injunction that he initially issued in April covering 16 cities and counties including San Francisco, where he is based, to cover a new batch of local governments that recently joined the case and sought to be protected under his court order.

The lawsuit was filed after Trump signed two executive orders in January and February that the cities and counties said unlawfully threatened to cut off funding to them unless they cooperated with federal immigration law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Those orders targeted so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have laws and policies that limit or prevent local law enforcement from assisting federal officers with civil immigration arrests.

Orrick on Friday said Trump's orders "threaten to withhold all federal funding from the plaintiffs as sanctuary jurisdictions if they do not adapt their policies and practices to conform with the Trump administration's preferences."

"That coercive threat (and any actions agencies take to realize that threat, or additional Executive Orders the President issues to the same end) is unconstitutional, so I enjoined its effect," Orrick wrote. "I do so again today for the protection of the new parties in this case."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration is already appealing Orrick's earlier ruling.

Among the cities covered by Orrick's new order is Los Angeles. Trump's deployment in June of the National Guard to patrol Los Angeles after protests against intensified federal immigration raids is the subject of a separate lawsuit by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Kim Coghill)