On Wednesday, President Donald Trump went on the warpath against the ruling of a US judge. The ruling blocked Trump’s executive order to deny so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ billions of dollars in federal grants for harboring undocumented immigrants and refusing to cooperate with immigration authorities. Trump slammed the move as ‘ridiculous’.
The San Francisco federal court of Judge William Orrick issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday to bar any attempt to implement the President’s executive order, issued on 25 January. Trump’s immediate response was a furious post on social media site, Twitter. He called this ruling and the previous blocking of his travel ban ‘ridiculous’ adding that both cases would be heading to the Supreme Court.
Late on Tuesday, the White House also issued an equally furious statement. It noted that the rule of law had received yet another blow with immigration policy being unilaterally rewritten by an unelected federal judge in an ‘egregious overreach’ of his authority, which they claim undermines public faith in the country’s legal system. The White House again insisted that sanctuary cities, such as San Francisco, are endangering their citizens by harboring criminal aliens, and accused the city officials behind such policies of having blood on their hands.
Later, Trump posted on Twitter again, noting that the Ninth Circuit, which blocked both of his executive orders, has a record of having its rulings overturned and suggested that ‘judge shopping’ was the reason both cases had gone before that particular court.