Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Two top Trump administration officials, including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on Friday rebuked California’s chief justice for accusing federal agents of “stalking” undocumented immigrants in state courthouses.
Sessions and John Kelly, secretary of Homeland Security, said in a letter to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye that the state and “many of its largest counties” are hindering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from making arrests in prisons and jails, so they’re turning to safe public places, including courthouses.
“As the chief judicial officer of the state of California, your characterization of federal law enforcement officers is particularly troubling,” Sessions and Kelly wrote. “As you are aware, stalking has a specific meaning in American law, which describes criminal activity involving repetitive following or harassment of the victim with the intent to produce fear of harm.”
California’s courts are closed Friday in observance of the Cesar Chavez holiday. Cantil-Sakauye could not immediately be reached for comment.
The officials were responding to a March 16 letter from Cantil-Sakauye, asking that ICE agents stop using courthouse as “bait” to arrest undocumented immigrants. She called the arrests “neither safe nor fair.”
“They not only compromise our core value of fairness,” Cantil-Sakauye wrote, “but they undermine the judiciary’s ability to provide equal access to justice.”
The chief justice, asked about her use of the word “stalking” after she sent the letter, told San Francisco’s KQED that she chose the word intentionally. She likened immigrants’ fears to those of victims in the domestic violence court she once ran as a Sacramento County Superior Court judge.
“I used that word because it is what’s happening, and it may not be what [ICE agents'] exact intention is, but that’s how victims feel, that’s how the public begins to feel about that kind of behavior,” Cantil-Sakauye said.
The chief justice’s letter drew praise from California’s Democratic leaders, including lawmakers who gave her a standing ovation at her annual State of the Judiciary address to the Legislature on Monday. Sessions and Kelly gave no indication of granting Cantil-Sakauye’s request to stop the arrests.
“To be clear, the arrest of individuals by ICE officers and agents is predicated on investigation and targeting of specific persons who have been identified by ICE and other law enforcement agencies as subject to arrest for violations of federal law,” the Trump administration officials wrote. “ICE does not engage in ‘sweeps’ or other indiscriminate arrest practices.”
Sessions and Kelly suggested Cantil- Sakauye “express [her] concerns” about courthouse arrests to the governor and local officials “who have enacted policies that occasionally necessitate ICE officers and agents to make arrests in courthouses and other public places.”
California this week filed papers supporting the city of San Francisco in its suit challenging the Justice Department’s plan to withhold federal grants from so-called sanctuary cities. Santa Clara County and the cities of Salinas and Los Angeles have also sued.
The state’s amicus brief assailed the Trump administration’s executive order as “an aggressive attempt by President [Donald] Trump to coerce state and local jurisdictions into participating in immigration enforcement even in situations where that participation would undermine public safety and go against the best judgment of the law enforcement officials who are most familiar with local communities.”
