Trump Administration Sues California Over Immigration Laws

Mr. Brown called the lawsuit a “political stunt” in a statement.

“At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America,” Mr. Brown said. “Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don’t work here. SAD!!!”

He reiterated that the California Values Act prohibits local authorities from asking about immigration status during routine interactions, but that it does not prohibit federal immigration enforcement agents from working with local sheriffs or cooperating with them in the deportation of people in prison or jails.

Document: Justice Dept.’s Suit Against California

California began battling the Trump administration even before Mr. Trump took office, standing in opposition on a litany of issues, including marijuana, environmental regulations and taxes. But immigration has proved to be the most contentious fight with local officials assuring undocumented immigrants that they would do all they could to protect them.

Last year, California enacted the sanctuary laws, which place restrictions on when and how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agents.

Both Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump have threatened to pull federal grant money from cities and states that have sanctuary laws to protect undocumented immigrants. They argue that the policies flout federal laws and help criminals evade deportation.

And the Justice Department asked 23 jurisdictions across the country this year to provide documentation that they had not kept information from federal immigration authorities, or receive a subpoena for the information. It is also exploring possible criminal charges for local politicians who enact sanctuary policies.

The lawsuit expected to be filed on Tuesday evening in Federal District Court in Sacramento is the first against a local or state government over its immigration policies filed by the Justice Department under Mr. Sessions. Department officials said that they would not rule out the possibility of other lawsuits against local governments whose policies interfere with the federal government’s authority on immigration. Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont have state sanctuary laws, as do cities and counties in more than a dozen states, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

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The federal government said that three California laws, enacted over the past year, make it impossible for federal immigration officials to do their jobs and deport criminals who were born outside of the United States. The suit called the laws unconstitutional.

One, the California Values Act, strictly limits state and local agencies from sharing information with federal agents about criminals or suspects unless they have been convicted of a serious crimes. The law, which took effect Jan. 1, was the centerpiece of the state legislature’s effort to thwart the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Soon after the law was enacted, Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that the state should expect to see “a lot more deportation officers” and that elected officials who support the policy should be arrested.

“We’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes,” he said. “These politicians can’t make these decisions and be held unaccountable for people dying. I mean, we need to hold these politicians accountable for their actions.”

State lawmakers also passed the Immigrant Worker Protection Act, which prohibits local business from allowing immigration to access employee records without a court order or subpoena. Mr. Becerra warned that anyone who violates the new law would face a fine of up to $10,000.

In the state budget bill, California lawmakers prohibited new contracts for immigration detention in the state and gave the state attorney general the power to monitor all state immigration detention centers.

The state and several local governments including the cities of San Francisco and Sacramento have also set up legal defense funds to help defend immigrants during deportation proceedings.

“I’m worried about the ‘Dreamers,’ hard-working immigrant families and law-abiding people who are just trying to make their way like the rest of us,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento said this year when asked about the state’s sanctuary legislation. “Civil disobedience is a respectful way to show your love for country.”

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Tensions between local and federal officials reached yet another crescendo as last week, when Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland publicly warned of coming large-scale immigration arrest operations. Mr. Homan compared the mayor to a “gang lookout yelling, “Police!” and said she gave people living in the United States illegally a chance to flee. He said her warning meant that the federal immigration authorities arrested roughly 200 people rather than the 1,000 they had anticipated rounding up.

Although Mr. Homan and other federal officials have warned about targeting California as it steps up immigration enforcement efforts, the number of people arrested has not dramatically increased so far. In December, the most recent month for which data is available, 1,715 unauthorized immigrants in California were arrested by ICE, compared with 1,379 in December 2016.

This is not the first time that the Justice Department has sued a state. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department filed a civil rights lawsuit against Georgia for segregating students with disabilities from classrooms and sued North Carolina over a bill to restrict bathroom use for transgender citizens. Mr. Sessions withdrew that lawsuit.

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Gary Cohn Said He Will Resign as Trump’s Top Economic Adviser

It leaves Mr. Trump surrounded primarily by advisers with strong protectionist views who advocate the types of aggressive trade measures, like tariffs, that Mr. Trump campaigned on but that Mr. Cohn fought inside the White House. Mr. Cohn was viewed by Republican lawmakers as the steady hand who could prevent Mr. Trump from engaging in activities that could trigger a trade war.

Even the mere threat, last August, that Mr. Cohn might leave sent the financial markets tumbling. On Tuesday, Mr. Cohn’s announcement rattled markets, and trading in futures pointed to a decline in the United States stock market when it opened on Wednesday.

In a statement, Mr. Cohn said he had been pleased to work on “pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people, in particular the passage of historic tax reform.” White House officials said that Mr. Cohn was leaving on cordial terms with the president and that they planned to discuss policy even after his departure.

Mr. Cohn’s departure comes as the White House has been buffeted by turnover, uncertainty and internal divisions and as the president lashes out at the special counsel investigation that seems to be bearing down on his team.

A host of top aides have been streaming out the White House door or are considering a departure. Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary and a member of the inner circle, resigned after spousal abuse allegations. Hope Hicks, the president’s communications director and confidante, announced that she would leave soon. In recent days, the president has lost a speechwriter, an associate attorney general and the North Korea negotiator.

Others are perpetually seen as on the way out. John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, at one point broached resigning over the handling of Mr. Porter’s case. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, has been reported to be preparing to leave. And many officials wonder if Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will stay now that he has lost his top-secret security clearance; the departure of Mr. Cohn further shrinks the number of allies Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have in the White House.

More than one in three top White House officials left by the end of Mr. Trump’s first year and fewer than half of the 12 positions closest to the president are still occupied by the same people as when he came into office, according to a Brookings Institution study.

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Mr. Cohn’s departure will bring the turnover number to 43 percent, according to updated figures compiled by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution.

For all the swings of the West Wing revolving door over the last year, Mr. Cohn’s decision to leave struck a different chord for people. He is among the most senior officials to resign to date.

Mr. Trump’s announcement last week that he would levy tariffs on aluminum and steel imports was the most immediate catalyst for Mr. Cohn’s departure, according to people familiar with his thinking. A longtime proponent of free trade, Mr. Cohn believed the decision could jeopardize economic growth. The president, urged to consider the risks of losing Mr. Cohn by several advisers, appeared unconcerned, insisting that he could live without his economic adviser as he makes a more aggressive return to the nationalist policies that helped sweep him into office as the 2018 midterm elections approach.

Mr. Cohn was familiar with Mr. Trump’s nationalist stance on trade, and the president repeatedly asked aides, “Where are my steel tariffs?” over the last eight months. Since last summer, a process for debate and information flow to the president had been in place as he made decisions. But that process has been in tatters since Mr. Porter left the White House, several aides said on Tuesday.

What’s more, people close to the president said, Mr. Cohn had harmed his own ability to negotiate by telling Mr. Kelly last week that if the tariffs went forward, he might have to resign. The president was told by Cohn critics that Mr. Cohn had made the issue about himself, as opposed to Mr. Trump’s policies. That led to Mr. Trump souring on Mr. Cohn by the time his resignation was submitted on Tuesday. But the president was still infuriated by Mr. Cohn’s decision, according to multiple people who discussed it with the president after it was announced. In several conversations that Mr. Trump had with people on Tuesday, he denounced Mr. Cohn as a “globalist.”

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The resignation followed conversations Mr. Cohn held with the president in recent weeks about the possibility of replacing Mr. Kelly as chief of staff, said people who were briefed on the matter. The president never formally offered Mr. Cohn the job, those people insisted, but Mr. Trump had discussions with him about whether he would be interested.

On Tuesday, before Mr. Cohn’s announcement, Mr. Trump dismissed talk of chaos in his White House while acknowledging that he deliberately fostered a fractious atmosphere. “I like conflict,” he said at a news conference with the visiting prime minister of Sweden. “I like having two people with different points of view. And I certainly have that. And then I make a decision. But I like watching it. I like seeing it. And I think it’s the best way to go.”

But he insisted that he had no trouble recruiting or retaining people to work for him, despite widespread reluctance among Republicans to join his staff.

“Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House,” he said. “They all want a piece of the Oval Office. They want a piece of the West Wing.”

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People close to Mr. Cohn said that he had planned to stay for roughly a year, and that he had accomplished a number of things he cared about, including the $1.5 trillion tax cut.

A onetime silver trader who eventually became the president of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Cohn was an unlikely addition to the administration. A lifelong Democrat known for having progressive social views, he had no political expertise and barely knew Mr. Trump. But during an unconventional job interview, Mr. Trump was impressed with Mr. Cohn’s knowledge of economics and the markets, say people who were briefed on the discussion.

As his chief economic adviser, Mr. Cohn quickly ingratiated himself to the president. He gave blunt, practical advice, say people familiar with their interactions, and built a team of experts on issues like infrastructure and taxes. At one point, he was part of a moderate-minded coalition of staff members — including Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, also an adviser — who pushed for the preservation of workplace rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. He also pushed Mr. Trump to remain in the Paris climate accord, a battle he ultimately lost.

He argued frequently over Mr. Trump’s “America First” approach to trade, jousting most recently with the White House aide Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over the harm he believed nationalist economic policies would generate.

Shortly after his inauguration, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an Obama-era trade agreement with a number of Asian nations. Then, on at least three occasions last year, Mr. Cohn rebuffed Mr. Navarro’s attempts to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Cohn was also part of a group of White House aides who effectively blocked the metal tariffs on several occasions.

Some of Mr. Cohn’s struggles on the job were painfully public. During an interview with CNBC, he once described working for Mr. Trump as a “dream come true.” Yet as the top economic adviser to a president who is often contradictory on matters of policy, he sometimes had to finesse Mr. Trump’s errors, a role that critics regarded as damaging to Mr. Cohn’s reputation.

Mr. Cohn’s rapport with Mr. Trump has been tenuous at times.

In August, after violent nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Va., that led to a woman’s death, Mr. Cohn was so troubled by the president’s response that he wrote a resignation letter, according to people briefed on the document. That time, Mr. Trump persuaded him to stay. But, loath to hide his feelings on the matter, he publicly criticized his boss, saying in a Financial Times interview that the administration “can and must do better” to condemn hate groups.

Late last year, Mr. Navarro was placed under Mr. Cohn’s supervision and asked to copy him on emails, effectively neutering his effect on policy for a time. But a tumultuous period in the White House in February resulted in Mr. Navarro’s re-ascendance, and with that, his protectionist policy agenda.

Mr. Cohn, who officials said has not set a firm departure date, will probably take a month or so to regroup after leaving, according to someone familiar with his thinking. Possibilities he has considered for a next step, said this person, include opening up his own investment firm or, according to two people familiar with his thinking, a more senior job in the Trump administration.

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