Trump persists in his campaign against Los Angeles: he sues the city and its mayor over sanctuary city policies.

It was seven months ago, at the end of November 2024, when Los Angeles was declared a sanctuary city. This meant that the use of local resources to assist federal authorities in pursuing immigrants was prohibited. Donald Trump, newly elected, never liked this policy, and as soon as he took office, he condemned Chicago and its state, Illinois, for implementing it. Now it is Los Angeles’s turn, the unofficial capital of the West Coast and the second-largest city in the United States. On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that it would sue both the city of California and its city council, the council president, and Mayor Karen Bass for “interfering with the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

The lawsuit made public by the Department of Justice through the Attorney General’s office states that these policies associated with the so-called sanctuary cities in Los Angeles “are not only illegal under federal law” but also that “Los Angeles’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities contributed to the recent anarchy, riots, looting, and vandalism, which were so severe that they forced the federal government to deploy the California National Guard and U.S. Marines to quell the chaos.” This refers to the disturbances that took place during the second week of June, when hundreds of people filled the city and especially downtown in protest against the more than 1,600 arrests that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made randomly in workplaces, gathering places, parking lots, and commercial establishments throughout the county, which has about 10 million inhabitants.

The lawsuit against the city and Bass is very clear. It states that the country is “facing a crisis of illegal immigration.” In fact, it references one of Trump’s first decrees, signed on the same day he took office, where he proclaimed a national emergency at the border with Mexico to end irregular immigration. However, it accuses Los Angeles of becoming a sanctuary city that “rejects both cooperation and sharing information, even when required, with federal authorities.” “The laws of Los Angeles as a sanctuary city are illegal,” argues the lawsuit, which is 21 pages and dated this Monday. “These laws and policies are designed to interfere, and indeed do so, with the immigration laws established by the federal government.”

“The express purpose of Los Angeles’s sanctuary city law is to impede the [ICE] and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from fulfilling the obligations imposed by Congress,” states the lawsuit. “This has been publicly declared by the council members who approved the bill. Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez proclaimed that ‘we refuse to stand by and let Donald Trump deport [illegal immigrants],’” it reads. Los Angeles has for months been standing up to Trump and ICE regarding deportations, which are conducted randomly and casually, instilling fear among hundreds of people, whether they are legally documented or not.

According to the complaint filed in the Los Angeles courts, the city is obstructing federal policies and, therefore, since June 6, situations of “anarchy, riots, looting, and vandalism” have arisen. The reality is that all of this lasted barely a week and that the situation worsened precisely because Washington sent 2,000 National Guard troops, who did little but set a precedent. Both California Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass stated that the troops were unnecessary and that the state had not requested them.

Trump’s confrontation with sanctuary cities—most of which are Democratic—and with Los Angeles and California is direct. In fact, after sending another 2,000 members of the National Guard, he also decided to send 700 marines, who were never needed because they played no active role other than positioning themselves in front of federal buildings. Trump even suggested detaining Newsom, in what the latter called “a clear step toward authoritarianism.” Moreover, the presence of the National Guard reached the courts in mid-June: first, a judge ruled in favor of Newsom, asserting that Trump violated the Constitution by sending this elite unit. However, Washington promptly appealed, and hours later the judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals suspended that decision, which allowed Trump to regain command of the military.

Now, a couple of weeks later, the United States accuses the city of Los Angeles of having exceeded what is permitted by Congress and the president. They accuse it of violating three clauses against the government. In statements to Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that these sanctuary city policies “are leading to violence, chaos, and attacks on the law that Americans have witnessed in Los Angeles.” The riots were limited in time and space and concluded with a large, entirely peaceful demonstration on June 14, which gathered more than 30,000 people just in the city center and hundreds of thousands more throughout the county.

For now, Mayor Bass—whose term will face the polls in November 2026—has not responded to the complaint. On Tuesday, the city council will meet to prioritize “immediate legal action” to protect Los Angeles residents from being randomly detained or targeted based on racial issues.