Phill Kline, former Kansas Attorney General and current law professor at Liberty University School of Law, said he would advise President Donald Trump to draft his forthcoming executive order on sanctuary cities surrounding the withholding of funds to avoid legal challenges.
On Tuesday, Trump signaled to reporters he has an executive order in the works that seeks to “end” sanctuary cities.
“We’re going to end sanctuary cities for some of these jurisdictions that aren’t cooperating with law enforcement. They’re guarding criminals, they’re taking the rights away from the citizens of their state and their city, and we’re going to be ending sanctuary cities if we find it necessary to do so in certain major areas. We may just end the entire thing altogether because it’s just a way of protecting criminals…So we may be presenting you very shortly with an executive order ending sanctuary cities,” Trump said.
Noting how the president attempted to ban sanctuary cities during his first term and was met with a plethora of legal challenges, Kline said that the executive branch has “extensive authority” over the distribution of federal funds and can use such funds to “pinch” cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration laws.
“I would deal with it in the context of withholding funding. I’d find areas where the president and the executive branch have extensive authority to require funds be dedicated to specific purposes, and give him discretion to withhold those funds if they’re not used properly. That’s how I would pinch the cities,” Kline explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Saying sanctuary cities are illegal is not an option under our Constitution,” Kline added.
Kline explained that the idea of sanctuary cities is not unconstitutional until jurisdictions attempt to bar federal officials from enforcing federal law.
“The sanctuary city movement, basically, does not collaborate to violate federal law, but it does indicate in most instances that local law enforcement will not cooperate with federal officials in enforcing the law. Generally under the concept of federalism, they have the right to do so. The authority to force them to comply with federal law and to cooperate with federal officials lies with the state, not with the federal government,” Kline explained.
“It’s common for a local government to say, look, we’ve got different priorities, so we’re not going to allocate our resources to federal law and if you want to enforce federal law, you have to do it. That happens all the time and sanctuary cities are underneath that type of authority and discretion, but that’s far different than trying to throw up, for example, roadblocks and prevent federal officials from coming in to enforce the law. They can’t do that,” Kline added.
Kline said an example of a sanctuary city conspiring to violate federal law would include, for example, officials “conspiring to bring in illegal aliens, sheltering them away from federal officials, and hiding them in a basement.”
“That is violating a federal criminal statute and can be enforced,” Kline stressed.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
