Judge says federal court can’t rule on challenge to Orleans sheriff’s ‘sanctuary’ policy

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A federal judge last week temporarily halted the state of Louisiana’s legal challenge to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office’s longstanding immigration policy, which prohibits jail staff from honoring federal immigration detainer requests to hold local arrestees suspected of being in the country illegally past their release dates.

On Wednesday (Feb. 18), U.S. Magistrate Judge Janis van Meerveld ruled that the central question in the case — whether a recently enacted state ban on so-called “sanctuary policies” requires the Sheriff’s Office to dissolve its pre-existing policy — is a matter of state, not federal, law and should be decided by the Louisiana State Supreme Court.

In her ruling, van Meerveld wrote that of the legal questions now before the federal court in New Orleans, “Not one concerns a federal question. Not one question has been addressed by a Louisiana court, let alone the Louisiana Supreme Court.” “Considering the posture of this case, the Louisiana Supreme Court is in the better position to address these questions,” she added.

In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who first filed the state’s challenge to the Sheriff’s Office’s policy early last year, blasted the ruling, calling it “just another delay tactic by the judge to resolve a very easy matter.”

On Thursday, the state informed the court that it planned to appeal the ruling to the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

The Sheriff’s Office’s policy, enacted in 2013, stems from a settlement in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by two construction workers, Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo — who were arrested by New Orleans police on minor charges in 2009 and 2010 and were sentenced to jail time. The two men alleged that in response to a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the sheriff at the time, Marlin Gusman, illegally held them inside his facility for months after their release dates, well beyond the two days that federal law authorizes for immigration detainers.

Under the settlement in the Cacho case, the policy is to remain in place “absent a change in federal or state law applicable to immigration detainers.” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill initiated the challenge to the policy a year ago, arguing that such a change had occurred with the passage of a state anti-sanctuary law. Act 314, which became effective in May 2024, prohibits policies that limit the extent to which local agencies can cooperate with federal immigration investigations and demands that local law enforcement comply with any detainer requests.

Murrill, whom van Meerveld has allowed to intervene as a party to the Cacho case, is demanding that the federal court order the policy dissolved, removing the primary barrier to state legal action against Sheriff Susan Hutson for declining to honor ICE’s requests. In his second term, President Donald Trump, who counts both Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry as allies, has increasingly demanded that local governments assist with federal immigration investigations. And many local agencies in Louisiana — a deeply conservative state — have fallen in line.

That has been the case even in New Orleans. Following last year’s dissolution of a long-running consent decree over the New Orleans Police Department — which demanded strict limits on local cops participating in federal immigration enforcement — city of New Orleans officials working with the state recently revoked a decade-old NOPD policy that restricted cooperation with agencies such as ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol.

A win for the state in the Cacho case could ultimately force deputies working in the Orleans Justice Center, one of the state’s largest and busiest jails, to assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown as well.

Van Meerveld, however, ruled on Wednesday that a federal court is not the proper venue for the decision on whether the policy should be thrown out. In her ruling, the judge said there are three questions that must first be resolved, all concerning state law: Can Act 314 be applied to a pre-existing legal agreement? Does the state law conflict with local autonomy granted in the state constitution to cities, such as New Orleans, that operate under a “home rule” charter? And, does Act 314 go against a provision in the Louisiana constitution that prohibits the state from imposing “unfunded mandates” on local agencies.

“If Act 314 is invalid then it is not a change in law,” van Meerveld said in her ruling, responding to the state’s argument that change in state law made the consent judgement in Cacho and the consistent OPSO policy obsolete. “And even if it is valid, if it was not intended to apply to this consent decree, then it cannot be interpreted as triggering the ‘change in law’ provision.”

The judge ordered the questions be put to the state Supreme Court. As of Friday, it was not clear when the state’s highest court would take them up.

In a statement Mary Yanik, co-director of the Tulane University Immigrants Rights Law Clinic and an attorney for Cacho and Ocampo, said she is “encouraged” that van Meerveld “acknowledged that we have raised important legal questions about the state law that no court has yet to answer.”

“This order confirms the (legal settlement) remains in place as the courts consider the State’s legal challenge,” Yanik said. “Sheriff Hutson has done exactly what she promised to voters and what her office requires: she is following the law.”

The Sheriff’s Office, which is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over its refusal to comply with demands from ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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This story was originally published by Verite News and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.