A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to end birthright citizenship. The case was brought by the states of Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Illinois; lawyers for the states contend that the 14th Amendment and U.S. Supreme Court case law have cemented birthright citizenship, a legal principle that automatically gives people born or naturalized in the United States citizenship upon birth..
While that case is on hold for now, other executive orders issued by President Donald Trump during his first days in office still stand, including the national emergency he declared at the border and his decision to limit asylum claims.
A recent memo from the U.S. Department of Justice also said federal authorities would investigate and potentially prosecute local and state officials who refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, which poses a threat to local law enforcement and other public employees in Oregon due to the state’s long-standing sanctuary law.
“Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller spoke with Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield about the new administration’s crackdown on immigration, and what impacts the policies could have on the state.
Dan Rayfield speaks at the Democratic election night party held at the Hilton in Portland, Ore., Nov. 5, 2024.
Brooke Herbert / OPB
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Dave Miller: You signed on to a recent lawsuit challenging the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, and then a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order to block it, calling it blatantly unconstitutional. What’s your response?
Dan Rayfield: Birthright citizenship was something that is incredibly clear in our nation’s constitution. It has a hundred years of legal precedence, and you have a hundred years of different precedents interpreting it the exact same way. So I can’t say that we are surprised that a federal judge would call this blatantly unconstitutional — I think one of the words he used was ‘flabbergasted.’
And I think when we think about the foundations of democracy, when you have a president on the first day of his administration try and rewrite the United States Constitution with the stroke of a pen via an executive order, it’s incredibly important that the judge ruled the way they did because that’s just the beginning.
What’s next? What other constitutional rights do you start moving down towards? This is why we have checks and balances in our democracy, so it was an incredibly important ruling today.
Miller: One of the big focuses of the new administration is a crackdown on so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, including Oregon. Can you just remind us what Oregon’s original sanctuary state law says?
Rayfield: Oregon’s Sanctuary state law is one of the oldest in the country. It has been something that has coexisted between, I think it’s roughly seven presidential administrations. On its simple face, it basically says that state officials, law enforcement, that we are not to enforce our federal immigration laws unless — and this is the big ‘unless’ part — there is the appropriate signed judicial order in that space. So this has been something that has been really grounded in Oregon.
Another good reminder for folks — on the ballot in 2018, there had been folks that tried to repeal this law, and the repeal effort failed 63% to 36%.
Miller: What would federal authorities need to do or to prove to get a judicial warrant?
Rayfield: They would need to make a filing within the court and move within that space. And again, it’s a little bit uncertain right now exactly how the Trump administration is moving. They have set up a lot of executive orders that are foreshadowing directions they may or may not take.
I think it is a little bit indeterminate in terms of some of the other different avenues where they’re asking agencies to look at things and then report back so that they can better determine what avenues that they want to move forward with.
Miller: So the Trump administration, they’re talking about going after local or state officials who don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Do you see that as a serious threat or as posturing?
Rayfield: It’s tough to know in any situation. Some of the statutes that they quoted I don’t think would be viable in those scenarios.
What I do know is that if there was a lawful judicial order signed, we are going to follow the law and move forward in that space. And so I think that part of that is probably a little bluster. But it does not change the fact that these are incredibly important issues in communities across Oregon, whether that is within the law enforcement community or whether that is in communities on the ground in various different cities.
People are incredibly unsettled and disturbed by the actions that are coming out of the Trump administration. Anytime you have a president who’s willing, like in this birthright citizenship case, to blatantly ignore well-established constitutional principles and try and modify those just by the stroke of a pen, that should be concerning to people.
So I think that unsettledness and unease is real, but you also have Democratic attorneys general across this nation, we have been prepared and ready to go and we knew that this was coming and the day after the president took these actions, we were there to be ready for them and we will continue to do that moving forward.
We are continuing to be prepared — anytime that the rule of law is being stepped on, we will be there to enforce it.
Miller: What would happen if, say, the feds arrested an employee of a county jail who did not honor a detainer request — a non-judicial warrant? Basically, I’m wondering if the state Department of Justice would defend that person in criminal proceedings.
Rayfield: So, typically, the Department of Justice does not have criminal defense lawyers on hand. Most of the time we think about when a public official or a state official has been charged with something criminal, it’s under a different context and there are policies from the Department of Administrative Services where things can be referred and people will be taken care of under those set of circumstances.
I think anytime, and this is what is incredibly bothersome, the Department of Justice is being weaponized for political purposes, that really presents us with a new set of unique circumstances. We need to consider all the options available to protect various individuals. So I think, should that come to fruition, that’s a very different set of circumstances.
I think it’s also, just as we live in a democratic society, it is incredibly disconcerting when the president says that we’re not going to weaponize the Department of Justice, yet in very same breath starts doing things that do in fact weaponize the Department of Justice for political purposes. It gets incredibly concerning. I think that’s again where we need to reevaluate our circumstances because it’s a new norm.
Miller: In an interview with Sean Hannity — Trump’s first interview since being inaugurated as president the second time — he said he would consider withholding federal money from sanctuary jurisdictions. This is something that he tried to do at the beginning of his first term as well. What might that look like in Oregon?
Rayfield: Real good example. This actually did happen during the first four years of the Trump presidency and they had tried to withhold some grant money. The state of Oregon, the prior Attorney General, filed a lawsuit and we were successful just like we were in [the birthright citizenship] lawsuit.
I think the one thing for folks to remember just as a context — during the first four years of the Trump administration, there were more than a hundred lawsuits that Democratic attorneys general filed, and they were successful more than 80% of the time in those lawsuits.
The first four years, I don’t think anybody could have guessed how active, in terms of violating the rule of law, that the Trump administration would have been. This time we were ready.
We have been preparing this entire summer to be ready in the event this occurs, and that’s why the response was so quick when birthright citizenship was signed as an executive order. That’s the way we’ll continue to act, moving forward, in this kind of collective like nationwide collaboration.
Miller: Broadly, how much of your office’s work do you think is going to be tied up in countering or responding to the presidential administration as opposed to furthering your own understanding of Oregon’s best interests as the attorney general?
Rayfield: After my four years, I don’t want to be known as merely someone who fought the Trump administration. That’s an incredibly important responsibility, it’s not even fighting the Trump administration, what you are fighting for is democratic principles of our society, and those are principles that will go on to last more than a hundred years. If you allow a president to overturn the Constitution unilaterally, not abiding by the principles of how that should be done either through Congress or through the states, that has such a broader, long lasting impact. So it is an essential responsibility of our administration to uphold the rule of law.
The other way that I want to be known, and I want our Department of Justice to continue to build on the work that it’s doing to protect seniors, to protect working families, and that isn’t going to be shortsighted in this way.
We also have a responsibility to improve safety in our communities, and that is going to continue. As we go through this legislative session, you’re going to see requests where we’ll have our public safety agenda that’s going to move forward to help so we can reduce the impact of drug cartels, human trafficking, and other important elements that we’re seeing in our communities.
At the same time, you’re going to see us move forward with a working families unit to really protect seniors, consumers, and working families in their spots. So we are going to fire on all cylinders. What is helpful in the front for democracy, that is something where every democratic attorney general in the state is working together and we are sharing resources to be able to be efficient and make sure that we uphold the rule of law. So I feel very fortunate to have wonderful partners across the nation in this work.
To hear more of Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield’s conversation on “Think Out Loud,” click play: