Ask ELi: Could East Lansing Be Punished by the Federal Government for its Sanctuary City Status?
With President-elect Donald Trump set to be sworn into office for his second term in a few days, an ELi reader wrote in to ask if East Lansing could be punished by the federal government for its sanctuary city status.
In 2023, City Council voted to designate East Lansing as a sanctuary city in a 3-1 vote. Since that vote, three of the five seats on council have changed hands. Now-Mayor George Brookover voted against the resolution and Councilmember Dana Watson voted for it.
During Trump’s first term, leading up to his 2024 election victory and in the months since, Trump and people closely connected to him have levied threats against sanctuary municipalities, including the threat to withhold federal funding.
In 2019, the Associated Press noted that sanctuary cities had continued to receive federal grants despite threats from the Trump administration, though legal battles on the topic raged throughout Trump’s first term.
ELi reached out to each member of council to ask if there have been discussions about modifying or repealing the sanctuary city resolution. Councilmembers Mark Meadows and Erik Altmann each responded by saying they have not discussed changing the resolution.

Meadows said it might be best to see what comes from the new administration before considering action.
“We could be targeted by Trump, he’s made a big deal out of this,” Meadows said. “But I think this is one of those things where we just wait and see.”
What does East Lansing’s sanctuary status mean?
Legally, the term sanctuary city doesn’t actually mean anything, Michigan State University Professor of Law David Thronson explained.
Broadly speaking, sanctuary cities are municipalities that instruct their law enforcement officials to not collaborate with federal agents to enforce federal immigration law. The exact details of sanctuary status varies from city to city, depending on the resolution each passes.
The East Lansing resolution says that “in a manner consistent with State and Federal law” East Lansing officials and law enforcement officers will not collaborate with federal agents solely to enforce immigration law and will not use city resources to investigate, question, detain, apprehend or register people solely for a civil violation of immigration law.
“It’s really just saying we’re going to choose not to expend our resources to assist in this federal responsibility of enforcing and administering immigration law,” Thronson said of the East Lansing resolution.
While East Lansing adopted the sanctuary city resolution in 2023, Meadows said the city has practiced the same policies for decades. In 2017, early in Trump’s first term, the city passed a resolution declaring itself a “safe haven” for undocumented immigrants that had essentially the same practical implications as the sanctuary city resolution.
But Meadows said the city has acted as a “sanctuary” municipality for decades, going all the way back to shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“The first person who did that was the police chief at that time, Lou Muhn, who refused to cooperate with federal agents who had asked the city police department to start, essentially, stopping anybody who looked like a Muslim and try to determine if they could be here illegally,” Meadows said.
While the 2023 resolution may not have had a practical impact on how ELPD approaches immigration law, the label of sanctuary city was added. The resolution states that adopting the title is important because it provides greater community understanding of the protections provided. However, the resolution also notes why some other municipalities avoid labeling themselves as sanctuary cities.

“Many cities that support undocumented residents, including the City of East Lansing, declared themselves ‘safe havens’ rather than ‘Sanctuary Cities’, due to potential withholding of funding from jurisdictions that declared themselves ‘Sanctuary Cities,’” the resolution reads.
So, is the city more at risk because of the sanctuary city label? Thronson said if the federal government seeks out municipalities to take legal action against, it’s possible the label draws attention to East Lansing. But legally, the label makes no difference.
“There’s no legal reason to shift their [the city’s] political stance,” he said.
Immigration policy will be front and center.
In the opening days of his first term, Trump signed Executive Order 13768. The order restricted federal funds going to “sanctuary jurisdictions,” but was found to be unconstitutional because it infringed on the separation of local, state and federal powers, Thronson explained.
As we head into a second Trump term, Thronson anticipates some similar action.
“Issuing an order like this is easy low hanging fruit,” he said.
“Part of what we’re going to see in the next coming months is throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks,” Thronson added. “Some of it kind of openly, just blatantly unconstitutional.”
Thronson explained that there are laws against harboring undocumented immigrants. However, those laws are used against people actively working against law enforcement by taking actions like hiding undocumented immigrants or creating fake IDs for them. The East Lansing resolution just says the city won’t go out of its way to enforce immigration law.
If congress passes a budget bill that restricts funding to cities that don’t participate in immigration investigations, that changes the legal landscape, Thronson said. However, it’s unclear how likely this is to happen.