The Justice Department is suing the state of New York, Governor Kathy Hochul, and state attorney general Letitia James for immigration enforcement, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday.
“We are taking steps to protect Americans,” Bondi stated, adding that “New York has chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens.”
“We sued Illinois, and New York didn’t listen, so now, you’re next,” Bondi stated.
“Our state laws, including the Green Light law, protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement given to CBS News New York on Wednesday night in response to the lawsuit. As I always have, I stand ready to defend our laws.
According to Bondi, state officials in New York are required by law to notify undocumented immigrants when federal agents request information about their immigration status. This is just one of the accusations made in the federal complaint. During the press conference, the attorney general also claimed that New York’s laws illegally hinder federal and state law enforcement from implementing immigration laws.
Late Wednesday night, Hochul responded to the lawsuit in a separate statement, calling Bondi’s news conference “smoke and mirrors,” as the Justice Department’s lawsuit was “a routine civil action about a law passed in 2019 that has been upheld by the courts time and again.”
“There’s no way I’m letting federal agents, or Elon Musk’s shadowy DOGE operation, get unfettered access to the personal data of any New Yorker in the DMV system like 16-year-old kids learning to drive and other vulnerable people,” Hochul said in a press release.
“Like all the others, we anticipate Pam Bondi’s pointless, publicity-driven lawsuit to be a complete failure. To be clear, New York is not going to back down,” Hochul added.
Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, is not involved in the lawsuit. The Justice Department said Tuesday that the legal case “has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime” that took place in his city under former President Joe Biden, and ordered prosecutors to temporarily halt their investigation into Adams’ office.
Bondi later stated that although the case against Adams had not yet been dropped, she anticipated that federal prosecutors would soon drop the charges against him. “We’re hoping that in New York, that Mayor Adams is going to cooperate with us with the sanctuary cities and the illegal aliens,” Bondi said.
During the news conference, Tammy Nobles, the mother of a woman killed by an El Salvadorian MS-13 gang member, discussed her daughter’s murder.
She issued a broad set of directives in her first few hours as attorney general, targeting sanctuary jurisdictions and ordering them to stop providing funding to those that “unlawfully interfere with federal law enforcement operations.” She urged the department to take enforcement action against states or sanctuary cities that fail to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
“State and local jurisdictions must comply with applicable immigration-related federal laws,” a memo stated. It further stated that “state and local actors may not impede, obstruct, or otherwise fail to comply with lawful immigration-related directives.”
Bondi focused on cartels and transnational criminal organizations in another memo, stating that the department would aim for “total elimination” of these groups and that “additional resources and thoughtful charging decisions” would be required to combat illegal drug trafficking.
The Justice Department sued the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago, and other local governments last week, claiming that their laws prevented the Trump administration from enforcing immigration laws more strictly in the region.
During the initial weeks of the Trump administration, Emil Bove, Bondi’s acting deputy, told Justice Department prosecutors nationwide to concentrate their prosecutions on implementing Mr. Trump’s immigration policies and suggested that they could bring charges against state or local officials who could obstruct their efforts.
Bondi also addressed questions regarding Elon Musk’s criticism of judges who have overturned the Trump administration’s actions in recent weeks during the press conference on Thursday. Because of their rulings, the tech billionaire and head of the Department of Government Efficiency has called for the removal of federal judges.
Although Bondi had not seen the remarks, she stated that the administration would appeal the decisions against it and that impeachment proceedings were not yet on the table.
