DOJ escalates blue-state ICE standoff after states refuse key federal request
The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it filed lawsuits against four Democrat-led states over their refusal to issue undercover license plates to ICE agents.
DOJ Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate previously issued an ultimatum to Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington, giving them until May 22 to provide immigration enforcement officers with undercover plates for their vehicles. Justice Department officials argue the states’ refusal unlawfully discriminates against federal law enforcement and violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.
These lawsuits escalate a months-long standoff between the Justice Department and Democrat-led states over immigration enforcement. The cases could test the limits of the Supremacy Clause as the DOJ seeks to assert legal authority over state motor vehicle departments, while the states themselves maintain that they are not required to assist with civil immigration enforcement.
"This Department of Justice will exercise any and all lawful authorities to support the brave men and women of law enforcement," Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said. "Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe and must be able to carry out their duties effectively. By denying undercover license plates to DHS components, including ICE, while issuing them to their own state agencies, these governors are pursuing discriminatory and obstructionist policies against federal law enforcement."
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An official in the Massachusetts governor’s office previously told Fox News Digital that the commonwealth does issue undercover plates to federal agents, but only if they are investigating criminal offenses. It refuses to do so in cases where civil infractions are being investigated, which covers most immigration cases.
"In Massachusetts, we support law enforcement doing legitimate criminal investigative work, and local, state and federal agencies doing that work can request confidential plates," Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement flagged for Fox News Digital by her staff. "But that’s not what we are seeing from ICE and its unconstitutional tactics."
Oregon, meanwhile, has gone a step further by placing a general moratorium on issuing undercover plates to federal agents, while Maine and Washington, like Massachusetts, are declining to provide plates for civil investigations.
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"We look forward to defending this lawsuit," Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a statement his office shared with Fox News Digital. "We take public safety seriously, and work with federal partners to voluntarily provide hundreds of undercover plates every year for criminal investigations. Judges across the country have found that the Department of Homeland Security’s tactics in conducting civil immigration enforcement routinely violate the Constitution."
"That is unacceptable," he added.
A spokesman for the Oregon governor’s office told Fox News Digital that Gov. Tina Kotek is waiting for the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct a review of its undercover plate policy and that she expects the agency to "communicate next steps."
The Maine governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Thursday.
The lawsuits filed by the DOJ cite the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which establishes federal law as supreme over conflicting state laws, arguing that it can be used to make the four Democratic states issue undercover license plates to ICE agents.
"The United States has sovereign authority to manage federal law enforcement activities and, under the Supremacy Clause, need not cede that authority to Maine (or any state) by abiding by its dangerous policy which jeopardizes federal law enforcement operations and the officers who carry them out," the lawsuit reads.
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"Under the Supremacy Clause, States do not have the power to dictate how the Federal Government executes its constitutional powers within their borders," it continued.
Conservative legal experts previously told Fox News Digital that they believe the DOJ is fighting an uphill battle in trying to compel states to issue specific license plates by leveraging the Supremacy Clause.
"Federal law preempts state law when state law conflicts with a supreme federal law. And when it does, the state law is preempted, meaning that the state law cannot be given legal effect in those instances of conflict," Charles "Cully" Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. "There is no law in my mind that is conflicting with federal law. You simply have state actors refusing to issue these types of license plates."
Stimson did add that there is an underlying assumption that, by virtue of being in the union and as implied under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the four Democratic states should cooperate with the federal government to enforce laws.
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Thursday.