The Trump administration has taken a hard-line stance on immigration enforcement, and while officials in California have protested the execution of those policies, judicial precedent suggests President Donald Trump has the authority to continue in the Golden State.

Operations by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants in Los Angeles have resulted in protests over the past week, some of which have devolved into violence. Trump called in the National Guard and Marines to quell the violence, against the wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, as they warned that the actions are inflammatory and unlawfully strip their authority.

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But at the heart of the dispute is whether California and Los Angeles, which fashions itself as a so-called “sanctuary city” in which local officials refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials, can prevent the Trump administration from conducting deportations. And the evidence supports Trump’s argument that the federal government has the right to override those state and local objections, even with the existence of sanctuary laws.

Los Angeles immigration operations

The immigration operations in Los Angeles are similar to those being undertaken throughout the country, targeting illegal immigrants for detention and deportation.

While Los Angeles and California both consider themselves sanctuary jurisdictions, meaning local officials have vowed not to assist federal officials with deportation efforts, the federal government has continued ICE operations.

Bass has insisted that the violence at protests began after the federal government intervened in what she said were peaceful demonstrations and that the unrest would end if the Trump administration ended its ICE raids. The Los Angeles mayor, a Democrat, said at a press conference Monday that she worries about “a test case for what happens when the federal government moves in and takes the authority away from the state or away from local government.”

Newsom also railed against what he called Trump’s “abuse of power” for conducting the illegal immigration raids and sending in the National Guard to contain the unrest in Los Angeles. The California governor also noted in his address that the raids were continuing, blaming them for the chaos.

While California officials have called on the Trump administration to end the immigration raids in Los Angeles, administration officials have insisted that the operations will continue. Judicial precedent backs up the federal government’s position, as legal showdowns over “sanctuary” policies loom in federal courts.

Previous federal supremacy cases

The Supreme Court has maintained in a pair of cases under Democratic administrations that immigration is a federal matter, which states may not enforce themselves, hampering their ability to intervene. Both cases dealt with challenges by Republican states over the federal government’s alleged refusal to enforce immigration laws.

In 2012, during the Obama administration, the Supreme Court largely struck down an Arizona law seeking to allow the state and local governments to enforce immigration law. In the majority ruling written by then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, the high court found that the federal government has “broad, undoubted power over the subject of immigration and the status of aliens.”

“The National Government has significant power to regulate immigration,” the ruling reads. “With power comes responsibility, and the sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the Nation’s meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse.”

“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law,” justices ruled in the 2012 Supreme Court case Arizona v. United States.

Nearly a decade later, the high court again ruled in favor of the federal government’s unchallenged authority over immigration matters by rejecting a lawsuit from Texas and Louisiana that attempted to challenge the Biden administration over its policies for detaining illegal immigrants.

The Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Texas that the states did not have standing to sue, holding again that immigration enforcement rests solely with the federal government.

“The States essentially want the Federal Judiciary to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policy so as to make more arrests. But this Court has long held ‘that a citizen lacks standing to contest the policies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution,'” the 2023 ruling reads.

While both cases emboldened the Democratic administrations to enforce immigration law how they chose, it also opened the door for the Trump administration to challenge how Democratic cities and states seek to halt immigration enforcement.

DOJ lawsuit against Chicago’s ‘sanctuary’ status

Earlier this year, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Illinois, Cook County, and Chicago, challenging their respective “sanctuary” laws, which the federal government argues violate the supremacy clause.

DOJ lawyers argue that the laws “reflect their intentional effort to obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and to impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe.”

The DOJ cited the 2012 Arizona decision in its argument that “the Federal Government has broad authority to establish immigration laws, the execution of which States cannot obstruct or take discriminatory actions against.”

The federal district court in Illinois has yet to decide the case, which was filed in February, but its eventual ruling could have implications for other sanctuary jurisdictions, including Los Angeles and California.

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A coalition of Democrat-led states with sanctuary jurisdictions has sued the Trump administration over its threats to federal funding for jurisdictions that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. The plaintiffs contend that the funding threat is an unlawful attempt at coercion to force cities and states to use their resources to help federal immigration authorities.

The lawsuits set up another challenge to federal authority over immigration enforcement, as Los Angeles has thrust the dispute into the spotlight.