Executive Order 13768 titled Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States was signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on January 25, 2017.

Legal challenges to the order were brought almost immediately after its issuance by San Francisco (supported by the State of California) and a number of other cities and counties.

In late April 2017, a federal court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the executive order, determining that the localities were likely to succeed on the merits of their challenge.

On November 21, 2017, section 9(a) of the executive order was declared unconstitutional by Judge William Orrick III, who issued a nationwide permanent injunction against its implementation.

[9][10][11][12][13] On February 8, 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 36-year-old Guadalupe García de Rayos, when she attended her required annual review at the ICE office in Phoenix, and deported her to Mexico the next day based on a removal order issued in 2013 by the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

[19] In 2008, she was working at an amusement park in Mesa, Arizona when then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio ordered a raid that resulted in her arrest and felony identity theft conviction for possessing a false Social Security number.

[18][20] Section 5 of the order prioritizes removal of aliens who "have been convicted of any criminal offense; have been charged with any criminal offense, where such charge has not been resolved; have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense; have engaged in fraud or willful misrepresentation in connection with any official matter or application before a governmental agency; have abused any program related to receipt of public benefits; are subject to a final order of removal, but who have not complied with their legal obligation to depart the United States; or in the judgment of an immigration officer, otherwise pose a risk to public safety or national security.

[28] Historian Claudia Koonz of Duke University, an expert on Nazi Germany, said that the proposal was deeply troubling and that: "It's tough to make parallels when the scapegoat is so different.

"[29] A number of commentators, including Amanda Erickson of The Washington Post, Christopher Hooton of The Independent, and Tessa Stuart of Rolling Stone also compared the policy of distributing list of criminal actions committed by undocumented immigrants to antisemitic Nazi propaganda that focused on crime in order to stir up anger and hatred toward Jews.

Legal scholar Ilya Somin, writing in the Washington Post's The Volokh Conspiracy, wrote: There are two serious constitutional problems with conditioning federal grants to sanctuary cities on compliance with Section 1373.

[47] Judge Orrick issued a preliminary injunction with nationwide effect halting implementation of the order on April 25, 2017, ruling that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their challenge.

Because Section 9(a) is unconstitutional on its face, and not simply in its application to the plaintiffs here, a nationwide injunction against the defendants other than President Trump is appropriate.The city of Richmond, California filed a similar lawsuit on March 21, 2017.

[51][52] The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice and the law firm Goodwin Procter are representing the cities pro bono in the suit.

The plaintiffs challenged ICE's on two counts: that civil arrests made at a courthouse violated a common law practice embedded in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA), and that the arrest policy was adopted in an "arbitrary and capricious manner" that violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and sought injunctive and declaratory relief from the ICE's practices.

[53] Judge Jed Rakoff rejected ICE's request to dismiss the lawsuit in November 2019, stating that the plaintiffs had a valid claim; "Courts cannot be expected to function properly if third parties (not least the executive branch of the government) feel free to disrupt the proceedings and intimidate the parties and witnesses by staging arrests for unrelated civil violations in the courthouse.

"[54] Judge Rakoff issued his summary judgement on June 10, 2020, affirming both counts that the ICE policy was illegal and enjoining the agency from performing any more arrests in such a manner in any courtroom in the state of New York.