Since the start of Pres. Trump’s second term in the White House, various lawsuits have been filed against executive orders he has signed due to concerns regarding the legality of them. One of these lawsuits was filed against a day one executive order, Executive Order 14159, also known as “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” On Feb. 7, New Haven mayor Justin Elicker announced at a press conference that the Elm City would be joining a lawsuit headed and filed by the city of San Francisco alleging that the executive order violates the tenth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Separation of Powers, the Spending Clause, the Due Process Clause and the Administrative Procedures Act.

“[The executive order] attempts to divert resources away from fighting crime, towards hunting down good community members that are productive and happen to be immigrants,” Elicker said.

The executive order signed by Trump installs stricter immigration policies such as invoking Article IV of the U.S. Constitution which closes off the U.S.-Mexico border to migrants and asylum seekers. It also includes an increase in the hiring of ICE and CBP agents, tougher penalties for offenses committed by undocumented immigrants and cutting federal funding to cities and jurisdictions that designate themselves as sanctuary cities.

Sanctuary city designations are put in place to limit interaction with federal immigration enforcement and protect undocumented immigrants who have not committed any violent crimes. Section 17 of the executive order explicitly calls for an end to federal funding for these cities. “The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall, to the maximum extent possible under law, evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds,” the executive order states.

The city of New Haven itself has received federal government assistance for programs such as domestic violence prevention which would lose that funding as a result. New Haven itself has been a sanctuary city since 2007, and despite the lawsuit, ICE has still been able to detain and deport undocumented immigrants found within these areas despite a lack of compliance from the city.

For example, a man who was convicted and charged for first-degree threatening with hazard to terrorize in New Haven was recently deported to Jamaica to face other charges there. ICE official Patricia H. Hyde discussed the situation with the deportation. “White is a violent criminal and presented a significant threat to the residents of our neighborhoods. ICE will not tolerate such a threat. We will continue to arrest and remove egregious alien offenders from New England,” she said.

The state of Connecticut itself also declared itself a sanctuary state in 2013 after former Gov. Dan Malloy signed the Trust Act into law. It was amended in 2019 to close loopholes found in the original law and was signed by the current Gov. Ned Lamont. Connecticut joins ten other states that have similar laws on sanctuary status for undocumented immigrants.

In response to the lawsuit, Ben Proto, the Connecticut Republican Party chair, put out a statement in opposition and said, “Elicker has no issues with illegal aliens committing crimes, those are the people Trump is trying to remove. Needs to wake up. They are fear mongers… they are out for political gain, not of interest to the state.”

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong on the other hand expressed a different sentiment shortly after Trump’s inauguration and said “We’re going to do what we can for immigrants and immigrant families because they’re important to us.”

The city of New Haven has also grown in population amongst immigrants with a 2015 study showing that approximately 22,000 residents of New Haven were foreign-born and at least 14,000 were undocumented immigrants. The latter potentially puts the city at risk for further deportations if the Trump administration opts to circumvent the status of sanctuary cities.

The university also has a large immigrant student population with approximately a third of the entire student body being from a foreign nation. The university still intends to be a safe space for immigrant students for the foreseeable future despite efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on immigration. The city of New Haven also still intends to be a welcoming space for immigrants even if they lose the lawsuit and risk losing funds.

“We are a city of immigrants,” said Elicker in a statement made days before the Trump inauguration.