Rochester Mayor Malik Evans said Monday that the city is moving to dismiss the lawsuit the Department of Justice filed against Rochester over its decades-old sanctuary city policy.

The suit, in April, stems from an incident in March when Rochester police officers assisted federal agents in detaining three people during a traffic stop. One of them was charged with illegal entry into the U.S.

Evans and Rochester City Council President Miguel Melendez, both of whom are named in the lawsuit paperwork, argued the officer's actions violated Rochester's sanctuary city policies.

The DOJ's lawsuit claims those policies violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution and seeks an injunction to stop them.

“To most Americans, that would look like law enforcement at its finest,” the lawsuit said. “But not to those leading the city of Rochester.”

In court paperwork filed on May 21, the city argues that the federal law enforcement agents at the scene "unlawfully conscripted local police to engage in federal civil immigration enforcement" and "essentially turned the scene over to the RPD," in violation of the Tenth Amendment, known as the states rights amendment.

Rochester established itself as a sanctuary city in 1986 and reaffirmed the designation during Donald Trump's first term with a unanimously passed City Council resolution. The 2017 resolution says the police “shall not engage in certain activities solely for the purpose of enforcing federal immigration laws, including not inquiring about the immigration status” of crime victims or witnesses unless needed for a criminal investigation. It also prohibits city employees from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.

"You can't say you are for the rule of law and you can't say you're for states' rights and city's rights and then try to force us to do your job for you," Evans said Monday. "All we're saying is, 'It's not our job to do your job.' We don't ask you to do our job for us, so don't ask us to do your job for you."

The Department of Homeland Security published a web page last Thursday declaring more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions," including the city of Rochester, Monroe, Wayne and Yates counties, as being sanctuary jurisdictions that it claimed were in violation of federal law. That list has since disappeared from the federal website.

The city's full response to the lawsuit can be found below: