DOJ puts blue states on notice as ICE fight barrels toward next constitutional showdown
The Justice Department is threatening to sue four Democratic-led states for denying undercover license plates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, opening a new constitutional front in the immigration fight....
By Fox News · Fox News
The Justice Department is threatening to sue four Democratic-led states for denying undercover license plates to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, opening a new constitutional front in the immigration fight. At issue is whether the blue states are simply refusing to help ICE carry out civil immigration enforcement, or whether withholding confidential plates interferes with the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. Charles "Cully" Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the states are playing a "dangerous game" by refusing to help protect ICE agents, but he also questioned whether DOJ’s Supremacy Clause argument is as straightforward as the department suggests. "Federal law preempts state law when state law conflicts with a supreme federal law. And when it does, the state law is preempted, meaning that the state law cannot be given legal effect in those instances of conflict," Stimson told Fox News Digital. "There is no law in my mind that is conflicting with federal law. You simply have state actors refusing to issue these types of license plates." DOJ DEMANDS SANCTUARY STATES END 'BLATANTLY UNLAWFUL' ANTI-ICE POLICY AS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH Stimson said DOJ’s challenge is establishing that the states are doing more than just refusing to help ICE. The department would likely need to show that the plate restrictions conflict with a specific federal law. "So as much as I think that the DOJ is putting forth a plausible argument, I don't think there's a lot of ‘there’ there in this argument," he continued. DOJ Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate warned on May 12 that the governors of Maine, Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon that they were running afoul of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law supreme over conflicting state laws, by refusing to provide immigration enforcement officers with license plates that conceal their identities as federal agents. "By refusi…