WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday it welcomed a decision by California’s third largest county to join its court challenge to the state’s new law limiting how much local police and sheriff’s departments support the Trump administration’s rigorous deportation policy.
“Orange County’s residents have experienced firsthand the negative effects of SB 54, which mandates releasing criminal aliens back into their communities instead of into the custody of federal immigration authorities,” said Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley.
SB 54 is the official title of what is commonly called the sanctuary state law that the heavily Democratic state passed late last year to bar local law enforcement from supporting Republican President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants with money, facilities, and access to people held in custody.
The board of supervisors of Orange County voted unanimously on Tuesday evening to join the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging the law.
Orange County has long been considered the conservative counterpoint to its famously liberal neighbor, Los Angeles. In recent years it has shown signs of an identity shift and the lawsuit could underline growing social and political rifts in its seaside towns.
The county supported Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, the first time it voted for a Democrat since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of its residents were born in another country, and people of Hispanic and Asian origins make up more than half the county’s population, according to the U.S. Census.
Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe
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