The Federal Government vs. Connecticut: Inside the DOJ's Escalating Legal War on Sanctuary Policies

On April 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an 83-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, naming the state of Connecticut, Governor Ned Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, the City of New Haven, and Mayor Justin Elicker as defendants [1]. The lawsuit alleges that Connecticut's Trust Act and New Haven's Welcoming City executive order violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution and two federal statutes — 8 U.S.C. §1373 and §1644 — that prohibit state and local governments from restricting the sharing of immigration-status information with federal authorities [2].

The filing marks the latest front in a DOJ campaign that has already targeted Minnesota, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, New York State, Colorado, Illinois, Rochester, and several New Jersey cities [3]. But just two weeks before the Connecticut suit was filed, a federal judge in Colorado dismissed the DOJ's analogous case there — raising immediate questions about whether this legal strategy can survive judicial scrutiny [4].

What the Lawsuit Targets

The DOJ's complaint names two specific policies.

Connecticut's Trust Act (Conn. Gen. Stat. § 54-192h) generally prohibits state and local law enforcement from honoring ICE detainers — requests to hold individuals for up to 48 hours so federal agents can take custody. The law permits compliance only if ICE presents a judicial warrant, if the individual is on a terrorist watch list, or if the person has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a serious felony, including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, robbery, and first-degree manslaughter [5]. Recent amendments expanded the list of qualifying offenses to include strangulation, burglary with a firearm, and possession of child sexual abuse material [6]. The Trust Act also limits the information police can share with ICE without the individual's consent and bars ICE agents from roaming correctional facilities [5].

New Haven's Welcoming City executive order, issued by Mayor Elicker in July 2020, prohibits city employees from disclosing a resident's immigration status or using city resources to assist immigration enforcement. It bars police and school resource officers from asking crime victims about their immigration status, from detaining anyone solely for unauthorized residence, and from holding anyone in jail based solely on an ICE request [7].

The DOJ's central legal argument is that both policies are preempted by 8 U.S.C. §1373 and §1644, which bar state and local restrictions on sharing "citizenship or immigration status" information with federal immigration authorities [2]. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate stated: "For years, Connecticut communities have paid the price of these misguided sanctuary policies" [1].

The Numbers at the Center of the Case

The DOJ's complaint alleges that Connecticut has honored fewer than 20% of 3,070 civil immigration detainers issued by ICE since 2020 — meaning approximately 2,456 detainer requests were declined [1].

Source: DOJ Complaint / CT Mirror

Data as of Apr 14, 2026CSV

ICE enforcement data from Connecticut shows a sharp escalation in arrests under the current administration. Average monthly apprehensions tripled from 21 in 2024 to 63 in 2025 [8]. Total arrests from January through July 2025 reached 405, more than doubling the 173 recorded in the same period of 2024 [8]. Deportations surged by 237.7% during that same window [9].

Source: CT Mirror / ICE Data

Data as of Oct 1, 2025CSV

A significant shift occurred in who was being arrested. In 2024, 47% of those apprehended by ICE in Connecticut had been convicted of a crime. By 2025, that figure had dropped to 25% — indicating a substantial expansion of enforcement to individuals without criminal records [9]. Community arrests — those made outside of jails and prisons — increased markedly [9].

The Anti-Commandeering Doctrine: Constitutional Bedrock or Movable Line?

Connecticut's primary constitutional defense rests on the anti-commandeering doctrine, rooted in two Supreme Court precedents that legal scholars consider among the most settled principles in modern federalism.

In New York v. United States (1992), the Supreme Court held that the federal government cannot compel states to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program [10]. Five years later, in Printz v. United States (1997), Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority that the Constitution's framers intended states to retain "residuary and inviolable sovereignty" that barred the federal government from "impress[ing] into its service ... the police officers of the 50 States" [11]. That case struck down a federal mandate requiring local law enforcement to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

The relevance to sanctuary policies is direct: if the federal government cannot conscript local police to perform federal background checks, can it conscript them to enforce federal immigration law?

During the first Trump administration, the government lost most cases attempting to punish sanctuary jurisdictions on these grounds [12]. In 2019, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California's Values Act did not impede enforcement of federal immigration law [13]. In July 2025, a federal district court in United States v. Illinois granted motions to dismiss and held that §1373 and §1644 pertain only "to information regarding a person's legal classification under federal law" and do not preempt state and city laws covering "contact information, custody status, [and] release date" [14].

Most recently, on March 31, 2026, U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher dismissed the DOJ's lawsuit against Colorado and Denver, citing the Supreme Court's anti-commandeering precedent and ruling that the federal government cannot force states or cities to use local resources to implement federal immigration programs [4]. The DOJ is expected to appeal.

Appellate courts have generally avoided ruling directly on whether §1373 is constitutional, basing their decisions on statutory grounds instead. But both conservative and liberal appellate judges have expressed doubt about the statute's constitutionality under Tenth Amendment analysis [14].

For the DOJ to prevail in Connecticut, it would need to convince the court either to distinguish this case from the anti-commandeering precedent or to adopt a narrower reading of that doctrine than most federal courts have applied. Several legal scholars have described this as an uphill argument. As the Lawfare Institute noted, the question of whether the federal government can compel states to enforce immigration law runs directly into some of the most firmly established constitutional limits on federal power [15].

The Fiscal Pressure Campaign

Beyond the courtroom, the federal government has applied financial pressure. Executive Order 14287 directs the Attorney General to identify federal funds flowing to sanctuary jurisdictions for potential suspension or termination [16].

For New Haven specifically, the DOJ has previously awarded the city nearly $6.4 million in federal grants used for police training, equipment, violence prevention programs, and other public safety initiatives [17]. Connecticut stands to lose access to certain grant programs, including two that send approximately $9 million annually to the state for emergency planning and operations [18].

But courts have been skeptical of this approach. In August 2025, U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from withholding or conditioning federal funds for sanctuary jurisdictions. The injunction initially covered Portland and 15 jurisdictions, then expanded to 50 municipalities and counties, including Chicago and Los Angeles [19]. Judge Orrick wrote that the orders "likely violate the Constitution, which gives Congress, not the President, authority over spending" [19].

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker cited this injunction as an "important victory," and the city had already filed its own lawsuit against the administration in February 2025 over the funding threats [17]. In total, the Elicker administration has filed five lawsuits against the Trump administration over the past year [7].

How Connecticut Compares to Other Sanctuary Jurisdictions

The Department of Homeland Security currently classifies more than 500 jurisdictions nationwide as sanctuaries [20]. Connecticut's Trust Act occupies a middle ground in this spectrum: it restricts detainer compliance and limits information sharing, but it includes explicit exceptions for serious felony convictions, terrorist watch list entries, and judicial warrants [5].

Some jurisdictions go further. New York City's detainer law, for example, has fewer exceptions for cooperation with ICE. Others have more limited policies that address only detainers without restricting information sharing [20]. New Haven's Welcoming City order is more expansive than many local policies because it covers all city employees — not just law enforcement — and prohibits any use of city resources for immigration enforcement [7].

New Haven's sanctuary history runs deep. In 2007, two days after the Board of Aldermen approved private funding for what was the nation's first municipal ID card program — designed in part to help undocumented residents access city services — ICE conducted a retaliatory raid, picking up 32 people in the largest enforcement action in the city's history [21]. That episode became a foundational moment in New Haven's relationship with federal immigration enforcement.

What the Research Shows About Crime and Sanctuary Policies

The DOJ has framed its lawsuit partly as a public safety measure. But the empirical research on whether sanctuary policies affect crime rates is remarkably consistent — and does not support that framing.

A University of New Mexico study led by Professor Loren Collingwood compared sanctuary and non-sanctuary cities and found "no statistically significant difference" in crime rates [22]. A county-level study published in Social Science Research found that sanctuary policies do not increase crime, and that declined detainer requests were associated with a subsequent decline in crime rates [23]. A Center for Growth and Opportunity working paper examining 42 cities with formal sanctuary policies found "no evidence that sanctuary policies cause an increase in crime overall" [24]. The National Immigration Law Center's review of available data concluded that sanctuary policies make communities "safer, healthier, and more prosperous" [25].

Researchers have identified methodological problems in studies cited by both sides. Defining "sanctuary" consistently across jurisdictions is difficult, since policies range from simple detainer restrictions to comprehensive non-cooperation orders. Studies also struggle to isolate the causal effect of sanctuary policies from other variables that influence crime rates — demographics, policing strategies, economic conditions, and broader immigration trends [26]. The most robust finding across the literature is a null or negative association between sanctuary policies and crime, a pattern that holds across different operationalizations of "sanctuary," different units of analysis, different time periods, and different analytical methods [26].

The administration has pointed to specific criminal cases — including a DHS press release in February 2026 about an individual with a sexual offense conviction who was released from a Connecticut jail rather than being transferred to ICE custody [27]. These cases are real, but researchers caution against drawing policy conclusions from individual incidents rather than systematic data.

The Steelman Case Against Sanctuary Policies

The strongest argument against sanctuary policies does not rest on crime statistics but on a more counterintuitive claim: that these policies may harm the immigrant communities they aim to protect.

Critics at the Heritage Foundation and in congressional testimony have argued that sanctuary policies create a "false sense of security" for undocumented residents [28]. When cities signal that they will not cooperate with ICE, immigrants may concentrate in visible urban areas and become more dependent on municipal governments whose protection is ultimately limited — city governments cannot override federal law, grant legal status, or prevent federal agents from operating within their borders.

The absence of local cooperation also pushes ICE enforcement into community settings rather than controlled environments like jails. When local law enforcement declines a detainer, ICE must deploy multi-person teams to locate individuals in homes, workplaces, and public spaces — operations that are more disruptive to communities and more dangerous for both agents and bystanders [29]. The 2025 Connecticut data supports this concern: as detainer compliance dropped, community arrests rose [9].

Congressional critics have characterized sanctuary jurisdictions as "magnets for illegal immigration" and argued that they impose resource burdens on local services including healthcare, housing, and education [29].

Sanctuary defenders respond that the trust-based relationship between local police and immigrant communities is itself a public safety tool. When immigrant residents fear that any interaction with local government could lead to deportation, they become less likely to report crimes, serve as witnesses, or cooperate with investigations — including in cases of domestic violence [25]. Acting New Haven Police Chief David Zannelli put the department's position directly: "We care if you commit a crime or not. The status of someone doesn't matter to the New Haven Police Department" [7].

What Happens If the DOJ Wins

If the court rules in the DOJ's favor, the immediate effect would be a declaratory judgment invalidating the Trust Act and New Haven's Welcoming City order, along with an injunction blocking their enforcement [2]. Connecticut law enforcement would then be required to honor ICE detainers in all cases — not just for serious felonies — and share immigration-status information on request.

The enforcement mechanism is the court order itself: noncompliance would constitute contempt of court. But the practical implications extend much further. A DOJ victory would establish federal precedent that 8 U.S.C. §1373 preempts state laws restricting immigration-enforcement cooperation — a holding that would threaten similar policies in more than 500 jurisdictions nationwide [20].

It would also narrow the anti-commandeering doctrine in ways that extend beyond immigration. If the federal government can compel state and local police to assist with immigration enforcement, the same logic could apply to other federal priorities — drug enforcement, gun regulations, environmental compliance. Attorney General Tong framed the stakes in these terms, calling Connecticut a "sovereign state" with the right to determine how its own law enforcement resources are allocated [1].

The timeline remains uncertain. The Colorado dismissal took roughly 11 months from filing to ruling. If the Connecticut case follows a similar pace, a district court decision could come in early 2027, with appellate review extending well beyond that. The DOJ has signaled its intent to appeal adverse rulings, which means the underlying constitutional questions may ultimately require Supreme Court resolution [4].

The Broader Pattern

The Connecticut lawsuit is not an isolated action but part of a systematic federal campaign. The DOJ has now filed suits against jurisdictions in at least nine states [3]. Each case is litigated individually, but the legal questions are identical: Does §1373 preempt state and local sanctuary laws? Does compelling local cooperation with immigration enforcement violate the Tenth Amendment?

So far, the federal government's record in court has been poor. The Colorado case was dismissed. The Illinois case was dismissed. Courts have blocked funding cuts. The first Trump administration's attempts to condition grants on immigration cooperation were largely enjoined [12][19].

But the DOJ appears to be pursuing a volume strategy — filing enough cases across enough circuits to create opportunities for favorable rulings and, ultimately, a circuit split that could force the Supreme Court to weigh in. Whether that strategy succeeds will depend not only on the legal merits but on the composition of the courts hearing these cases and the willingness of the current Supreme Court to revisit anti-commandeering principles it established three decades ago.

For Connecticut, the immediate question is more concrete. As Mayor Elicker put it: "We are going to fight this lawsuit with all we've got. We are confident we are on the right side of the law here" [7].