US judge blocks Trump from tying states’ disaster aid to immigration enforcement

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that an effort by the Trump administration to force states to cooperate with immigration enforcement in order to receive billions of dollars in emergency and disaster aid is unlawful and unconstitutional.

US District Judge William Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, sided with 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, which challenged conditions the US Department of Homeland Security placed on their ability to obtain grant funding.

Those states sued in May, arguing the department was unlawfully using federal funding intended for emergency preparedness and disaster relief to coerce them into adhering to the Republican president’s hardline immigration agenda.

The department, which oversees US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, had argued that such conditions were justified because it was tasked with enforcing federal immigration law.

But Smith said the department’s policy was arbitrary and violated the US Constitution, as it imposed sweeping immigration conditions on all grants, regardless of their statutory purpose.

“Denying such funding if states refuse to comply with vague immigration requirements leaves them with no meaningful choice, particularly where state budgets are already committed,” he wrote.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, hailed the ruling in a social media post, saying it would ensure “the department can’t hold life-saving disaster relief funds hostage to advance its anti-immigration efforts.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the department, in a statement said cities and states should not receive federal funding if they “break the law and prevent us from arresting criminal illegal aliens should not receive federal funding.”

The decision marked the latest victory for states contesting administration efforts to impose immigration-related conditions on grant funding.

Another judge in Rhode Island in June blocked a similar move by the US Department of Transportation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s conditions applied to all grants it administered.

After the lawsuit was filed, the administration said it had decided to apply them only to a subset of the grant programs.

But Smith, an appointee of former Republican President George W. Bush, said DHS never formally rescinded the policy, meaning states would remain bound by conditions attached to every grant, including those it advised should be untouched.

He said that as a result states “face a dilemma: either certify compliance with contested federal immigration policies or risk losing critical emergency and disaster-relief funding.”