Jeff Sessions is waging a war against California’s “most radical extremists”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions thinks California lawmakers are the “most radical extremists.”

That’s what he said at a hotel in Sacramento on Wednesday when he addressed a California law enforcement lobbying group about the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the state. Filed on Monday, the suit alleges that California enacted legislation that’s hampering federal immigration enforcement.

During his speech to the California Peace Officers' Association, Sessions said that the state of California had been “actively obstructing federal law enforcement” by passing laws requiring local law enforcement to inspect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. Another law also prevents people detained by local police for non-serious crimes from being released into ICE custody. That's a step further than policies in other sanctuary jurisdictions, which typically don’t hold undocumented immigrants arrested for minor crimes indefinitely until ICE can take custody of them.

READ: Jeff Sessions’ lawsuit against California is about more than just sanctuary policies

“This is basically going to war against the State of California,” California Gov. Jerry Brown said shortly after Sessions’ speech, according to the New York Times. “This is pure red meat for the base.”

This past year, in fact, has strained the relationship between the Trump administration and California. Within days of taking office, Trump said California was “out of control” by considering becoming a sanctuary state and threatened to withhold all federal funding, among other consequences for the state’s repudiation of the administration’s hardline immigration policies. He’s even suggested pulling ICE out of the state entirely.

In 2017 alone, Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, sued the Trump administration two dozen times in 2017.

“The main argument that the Justice Department makes in their case is that California is trying to inject itself into immigration enforcement matters — and that’s a federal matter and not a state matter,” said María Blanco, executive director of the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center. But that’s not what the California law does, according to Blanco. “It’s not required or constitutional for the local law enforcement to enforce immigration law,” she said.

But California’s laws are unprecedented at the state level, according to Blanco, although localities have pass similar on in the past, which have been upheld in the courts.

Still, Sessions and his department see California’s “radical agenda,” as Sessions puts it, as interfering with an area where the federal government has final say.

“Stop treating immigration agents differently from everybody else for the purpose of eviscerating border controls and advancing an open borders philosophy shared by only the most radical extremists” he added.

In his speech on Wednesday, Sessions also singled out the Mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf, who warned the community about upcoming ICE raids a day before the feds arrested over 200 undocumented immigrants, about half of whom had prior criminal convictions.

“Here’s my message to Mayor Schaaf: How dare you. How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote your radical open borders agenda,” Sessions said.

Though Sessions might insist that only a few radicals support the state of California’s policies, recent polling suggests that more than half of Californians support their lawmakers’ decisions on sanctuary policies, according to a USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll taken in November of last year.

Outside the hotel, about 300 protesters blocked traffic and held signs telling Sessions he’s not welcome in their state.

Meanwhile, across the country, Trump touted his immigration platform to a crowd of Latino business owners. During the speech, Trump didn’t bring up the Justice Department’s lawsuit, but he did link the “drug problem” with immigration and blamed Democrats for obstructing immigration debates in Congress.

Cover image: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addresses the California Peace Officers' Association at the 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day, Wednesday, March 7, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)