California sued the Trump administration for the 100th time in under two years Thursday, challenging the practice of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting people for alleged civil immigration violations at or near state courthouses. Rob Bonta said such arrests have long been barred because they are unconstitutional and deeply disruptive to the rule of law and the rights of victims, witnesses, defendants and other parties to court proceedings.
Independent legal experts said several factors have driven the wave of lawsuits. Presidents from both parties have increasingly flexed their executive power, and state attorneys general have increasingly sued in response. During Trump’s first term in office, California — under the leadership of then-Atty.
Xavier Becerra, a current gubernatorial candidate — sued the Trump administration more than 120 times over four years. Ken Paxton — now a Republican candidate for Senate — sued the Biden administration just over 100 times in four years. Trump in this term quickly began implementing an array of policies left over from his first term or outlined in the Project 2025 policy blueprint, many of which Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general were prepared to sue over, experts said.
Trump was also able to appoint a host of loyalists with the help of the Republican-controlled Congress, who helped advance policies that less loyal agency heads would have balked at, and which were sure to draw additional legal challenges, experts said. Daniel Farber, a professor at UC Berkeley Law School and author of “Contested Ground: How to Understand the Limits on Presidential Power,” said California’s raft of lawsuits is a result of the current Trump administration “doing more aggressive things right off the starting block” — but also repeatedly targeting California specifically. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
However, it has consistently derided Bonta’s litigation against the administration as baseless and misguided. When Bonta claimed in August that his lawsuits had saved California more than $200 billion, namely by reversing Trump cuts to federal funding meant for the state, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Bonta should stop “filing frivolous lawsuits” and “focus on addressing problems in his own state.” ICE, which also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has defended its arrests near courthouses as a “common sense” approach to apprehending offenders at times and locations where authorities know they will be. Bonta’s lawsuit argues that such arrests are arbitrary and capricious given the chilling effect they have on justice in the state.
They violate the Immigration and Nationality Act as intended by Congress, and interfere with California’s rights under the 10th Amendment to execute its “core sovereign judicial and police functions,” Bonta’s office said. His arguments echo those made by other state officials in the past. During Trump’s first term, for example, then-California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G.
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