Justice Department directs prosecutors to probe local efforts to obstruct immigration enforcement

The Justice Department memo signals an immediate turnabout in priorities for the new Trump administration. Gen. Emil Bove, also instructs the Justice Department’s civil division to work with a newly formed Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group to identify state and local laws and policies that “threaten to impede” the Trump administration’s immigration efforts and potentially challenge them in court. “The Department’s personnel must come together in the offices that taxpayers have funded to do this important work.” The memo said federal prosecutors must “take all steps necessary to protect the public and secure the American border by removing illegal aliens from the country and prosecuting illegal aliens for crimes” committed in U.S. jurisdiction.” The memo suggests there will be a spike in immigration cases under the new administration, instructing U.S. attorney’s offices across the country to inform courts of its policy “and develop processes for handling the increased number of prosecutions that will result.” Any decisions by federal prosecutors to decline to prosecute immigration violations must be disclosed to Justice Department headquarters in so-called “urgent reports,” which are used to update leadership on law enforcement emergencies or significant matters of national interest. The Justice Department is also directing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to “assist in the execution of President Trump’s immigration-related initiatives,” though the memo did not elaborate on what that work might entail. It also ordered the department’s components, such as the FBI and the federal Bureau of Prisons, to hand over to the Department of Homeland Security any “identifying information” they might have about people believed to be in the country illegally “for the sole purpose of facilitating appropriate removals, enforcement actions, and immigration-related investigations and prosecutions.” The memo also says the department will return to the principle of charging defendants with the most serious crime it can prove, a staple position of Republican-led departments meant to remove a prosecutor’s discretion to charge a lower-level offense.