In a move that's sure to be good news for the incoming Trump administration, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government does in fact have the authority to carry out deportations, even if local officials object. The case actually comes from the first Trump administration, as The Center Square reported on Monday.
As the report explained:
At issue is an April 2019 executive order issued by King County Executive Dow Constantine, which directed county officials to prohibit fixed base operators on a county airfield near Seattle from servicing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flights used to deport illegal foreign nationals.
Constantine’s order prohibited King County International Airport from supporting “the transportation and deportation of immigration detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, either traveling within or arriving or departing the United States or its territories.”
The airport is located next to a major ICE-Seattle base of operations.
The Trump administration at the time sued, arguing Constantine’s order violated the Supremacy Clause’s intergovernmental immunity doctrine and a World War II-era Instrument of Transfer agreement allowing the federal government to use the airport in King County.
A district court agreed, ruling in favor of the federal government. King County next appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
The Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment that the order violated the Supremacy Clause and the Instrument of Transfer agreement.
The panel also held that the federal government had Article III standing to sue and “had two related concrete and individualized injuries.” The first is “the inability to conduct the charter flights – which has increased ICE’s operational costs – constituted a de facto injury that affected the United States in a particularized, individual way” and “an imminent risk of future injury from the Executive Order.”
The second is the federal government’s injuries “were fairly traceable” and “are likely, as opposed to merely speculative,” as a result of the order. Were there no order, “an FBO would resume servicing ICE charter flights,” the court notes.
Constantine’s order violated the intergovernmental immunity doctrine because it “improperly regulated the way in which the federal government transported noncitizen detainees by preventing ICE from using private FBO contractors at Boeing Field, and on its face discriminated against the United States by singling out the federal government and its contractors for unfavorable treatment,” the court held.
Reporting from The Seattle Times also noted that Kings County will not further appeal the decision, with a spokesperson mentioning in part that the county "will of course follow the court’s dictates."
King County is one of those described as a "sanctuary city," but the days of sanctuary cities being able to get away with covering for illegal immigrants are likely coming to an end. Even better news for the incoming Trump administration is that, as The Seattle Times also mentioned, a district-level federal court issued a similar ruling last year.
The Ninth Circuit covers the more western states in the country, which are also among some of the most liberal and include many sanctuary cities when it comes to immigration.
Not only will King County be "follow[ing] the court's dictates," but it looks like they'll be eating plenty of crow as well, given that they hoped to be "leading the way," as The Seattle Times noted:
In 2019, under the first Trump administration, Constantine issued an executive order seeking to block the federal government from using King County International Airport (the formal name for Boeing Field) for flights deporting immigrants.
The order targeted private companies that fuel and maintain planes at the airport, ordering that future leases between the county and the companies would prohibit deportation flights.
At the time, county officials said it was likely the first attempt anywhere in the country by local officials to block ICE deportation flights, and they hoped to be “leading the way.”
“Deportations raise deeply troubling human rights concerns which are inconsistent with the values of King County, including separations of families, increases of racial disproportionality in policing, deportations of people into unsafe situations in other countries, and constitutional concerns of due process,” Constantine’s 2019 executive order said.
Tom Homan, named last month to be President-elect Donald Trump's border czar, has made clear that there will be mass deportations of illegal immigrants. He has also repeatedly made clear that local officials are not to stand in his way, as was recently the case with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D), who threatened to stop deportations.
"He's willing to go to jail. I'm willing to put him in jail," Homan said, which led Johnston to soon after admit that he regretted his remarks.
Polling from CBS News, including before and after the November election, shows that a majority of Americans favor plans for mass deportations. Last week's poll from The Economist/YouGov also showed that a majority or plurality of Americans across several demographics approve of Trump's plan to build a border wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and that they believe he'll actually carry through with such plans.