The Ninth Circuit just issued a major decision in support of the federal government’s authority to deport illegals, just in time for President Trump to take office and begin his mass deportation efforts.

In a nutshell, the Ninth Circuit ruled that local authorities do not have the power to overrule the federal government’s deportation of illegals in their jurisdiction, which happened back in 2019 in a county in Washington state.The county tried to prevent ICE from using their local airfield to deport illegals.

Further, the court ruled that the federal government has the right to sue if local authorities try to obstruct them, as in the case above.

Here’s more via the Washington Examiner:

The federal government has the authority to deport foreign nationals in the U.S. illegally over the objection of local authorities, a panel of three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

The 29-page ruling was written by Judge Daniel Bress, with judges Michael Hawkins and Richard Clinton concurring.

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.