The Trump White House Is Very Upset About States That Won’t Do Its Dirty Work

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.  It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.

Last week, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the County of Washtenaw, Michigan, and several of its local officials, accusing them of illegally interfering with federal immigration law. In a press release, DOJ touted the lawsuit as just the latest in “a series of 14 other suits” targeting “illegal sanctuary policies across the country.”

“Sanctuary policies” is not a legal term, and there’s no universal definition of what it actually means. Even within the Trump administration, what constitutes a “sanctuary city”—a conservative buzzword that generally refers to state and local laws that limit whether and how the jurisdiction can cooperate with federal immigration enforcement—has been subject to some dispute. In May 2025, the Department of Homeland Security posted a list publicly identifying hundreds of municipalities as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” and pulled the list down a few days later, following backlash from Trump-supporting sheriffs across the country who were confused and offended by the inclusion of their jurisdictions.

The Trump administration went back to the drawing board. And in August, the DOJ published a new list identifying 12 states, the District of Columbia, and several cities and counties as sanctuary jurisdictions. Two of those jurisdictions later agreed to collaborate on Trump’s immigration agenda, and DOJ subsequently removed them from the list. 

However, avoiding the sanctuary list doesn’t guarantee that jurisdictions get to avoid the DOJ’s sanctuary lawsuits. Washtenaw, the sixth-largest county in Michigan and home of the state’s flagship university, doesn’t appear on the list. The DOJ is suing it anyway.

Why? The Trump administration’s lawsuit complains that the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office prohibits local law enforcement from detaining people based on a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents alone, and instead requires a judicial warrant before it will detain anyone for federal immigration purposes. The County Board of Commissioners similarly bars ICE agents from carrying out enforcement activities in County buildings without a judicial warrant or court order. And the County Office of the Prosecuting Attorney advises local prosecutors to consider collateral immigration consequences when deciding whether or not to bring criminal charges against someone. 

According to the administration’s complaint, these policies “aim to obstruct federal law enforcement” and “celebrate thwarting the constitutional obligation of the President of the United States.” The administration asks the court to declare that the policies are preempted by federal law and order the county to stop enforcing them.

The administration faces an uphill battle. The Constitution and decades of Supreme Court precedent confirm that it is not actually illegal for local governments to have different policy preferences than the feds. And so far, courts have been reluctant to compel states into service as cogs in Trump’s deportation machine.

“Sanctuary” policies have been a hobbyhorse of Trump’s since his previous presidential term, and on his first day back in the White House, he issued an executive order directing DOJ and DHS to pursue civil and criminal actions against the places they deem sanctuary jurisdictions. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi started implementing this directive immediately upon confirmation. And the lawsuits—filed against states like New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota, and cities like Los Angeles and Boston—have followed a familiar pattern: They boast that Trump won the election on a campaign promising mass deportations; they allege that the jurisdiction’s policies deliberately impede federal immigration and single immigration officers out for less favorable treatment; and they argue that this violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The Supremacy Clause specifies that federal law is “the supreme law of the land” and is binding “notwithstanding” any state’s contrary laws. This might pose a problem for sanctuary jurisdictions if they were to claim that federal laws don’t apply to them or are invalid. But these jurisdictions are not actually saying the federal laws are void. They’re just saying they’re not going to do the federal government’s dirty work.

“Federal immigration agents must do their jobs, just as local prosecutors and law enforcement must do theirs,” said Washtenaw Prosecuting Attorney Eli Savit in a 2021 op-ed. However, he argued, “mixing the two is not only a recipe for disaster for immigrant communities, but also for everyone with a stake in public safety.” Savit explained that using local law enforcement for federal immigration operations undermines community trust, diverts limited resources, and is ultimately “deeply corrosive to public safety.”

Thankfully, the Constitution empowers local governments to spend their time and money addressing their community’s needs, rather than the Trump administration’s wants. The Tenth Amendment says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” And for decades, the Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that the federal government has no authority to commandeer state and local resources for its own purposes. 

In the 1992 decision New York v. United States, for example, the Supreme Court struck down part of a federal law regulating radioactive waste that required states to assume legal liability for waste generated within their borders. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the six-justice majority that “the Constitution has never been understood to confer upon Congress the ability to require the States to govern according to Congress’ instructions.” And while Congress could offer incentives, the challenged provision “crossed the line distinguishing encouragement from coercion.” 

A few years later, in Printz v. United States, the Court struck down part of a federal statute that required local law enforcement to help perform background checks on people buying guns. That ruling also clarified that the Tenth Amendment doesn’t just limit Congress, but prohibits the federal government from forcing states to carry out its regulatory programs “whether by legislation or executive action.” Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that the federal government would “immeasurably” expand its power if it could “impress into its service—and at no cost to itself—the police officers of the 50 States.”

Just two weeks ago, a federal district judge in Colorado invoked this line of precedents, and dismissed the DOJ’s sanctuary jurisdiction lawsuit against the state. “The Supremacy Clause undoubtedly prevents states from contradicting or obstructing the federal immigration scheme,” said Judge Gordon Gallagher, “but it does not go so far as to compel state assistance.” 

Another federal district judge, in New York, dismissed a similar lawsuit by the Trump administration last year. “A hope, however fervent, that federal-state cooperation will occur does not empower the federal government to conscript the States,” said Judge Mae D’Agostino. “Were it otherwise, the anticommandeering doctrine would cease to exist.” Still another federal district judge, in Illinois, dismissed another similar lawsuit. “The policies don’t make ICE’s job more difficult,” said Judge Lindsay Jenkins. “They just don’t make it easier.”

The Trump administration has sought all the help it can get in its aggressive pursuit of mass deportations. As of January 2026, ICE has empowered officers at 1,168 law enforcement agencies around the country to make federal immigration arrests, up from 150 at the end of Trump’s first term. “Partnership is vitally important,” said the new DHS Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, at his confirmation hearing last month. 

Mullin’s comments underscore that a lot of immigration enforcement depends on voluntary cooperation. The Trump administration’s desperate attempts to sue jurisdictions like Washtenaw County into compliance are a reminder that there’s no obligation to volunteer.