A pair of Massachusetts’ unapologetic “sanctuary cities” have asked a federal judge to block President Donald Trump’s plan to strip them of funding over their policies.

According to a motion for a preliminary injunction filed on Tuesday by Somerville and Chelsea, the targeting of cities and towns over their local policies is both unconstitutional and at odds with the advice of local law enforcement.

Trump has targeted the cities, the city’s attorneys tell the court, because “like many local governments across the country, Plaintiffs Chelsea and Somerville have adopted policies that limit their participation in federal immigration enforcement efforts.”

Adopting those sorts of policies, they wrote, does not mean that municipalities “obstruct or impede the activities of federal immigration officers in any way,” just that they have limited resources and have chosen not to use them to do the job of the federal government.

“As both the Chelsea and Somerville Police Chiefs attest, by avoiding unnecessary entanglement with federal immigration efforts, Plaintiffs’ policies help ensure that all residents — regardless of immigration status — feel safe interacting with local law enforcement and officials,” they wrote.

In a statement to the Herald, the White House called the lawsuit “laughable.”

“It’s laughable that these sanctuary cities are pointing to ‘public safety considerations’ for justification of their decision to violate federal law and harbor criminal illegal aliens” said White House spokeswoman  Abigail Jackson. “If they were truly concerned about the safety and well-being of their residents, they would cooperate with law enforcement to get dangerous illegal criminals out of their communities.”

While Chelsea has taken steps to identify itself as a “sanctuary city” and Somerville has similarly decided to call themselves a “welcoming city,” there is no strict definition of what makes a municipality a “sanctuary jurisdiction.” The term “sanctuary city” is generally taken to mean any jurisdiction where local law enforcement are forbidden from assisting federal authorities in civil immigration matters.

In a day-one Executive Order, Trump attempted to define the term to mean a cities and towns that “seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations.”

Lawyers for both cities deny accusations of interference.

However, the president later ordered his Department of Homeland Security and the Attorney General’s Office to identify and develop a list of cities “sanctuary jurisdictions” and ensure they “do not receive access to Federal funds.” The Trump administration last week published a list of so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, on which Chelsea and Somerville were included.

Also included were Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Concord, Holyoke, Lawrence, Newton, Northampton, Orleans, and Springfield, as well as every Massachusetts county except Hampden County.

The list of communities was subsequently removed from the Homeland Security website, which generated a “page not found” error page as recently as Tuesday night.

According to the Oren Sellstrom, Litigation Director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, one of the Cities’ attorneys, withholding funds is plainly unconstitutional.

“The President cannot use federal funding as a weapon to force local governments to undermine public safety and participate in his mass deportation efforts. By today’s preliminary injunction motion, we seek to protect sanctuary and welcoming cities, so they can continue to make public safety decisions that are in the best interests of their residents,” he said in a statement.

The plaintiff cites are seeking an injunction to block the Trump Administration’s efforts to strip them of federal funding. According to court filings, Chelsea received $14 million in federal funds in the last fiscal year, while Somerville saw close to $20 million.

Somerville City Hall (Matt Stone/Boston Herald, File)