A federal judge has halted the Trump administration‘s decision to withhold homeland security funding from states that decline to cooperate with certain federal immigration enforcement actions.
The ruling, issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy, came as a victory for a coalition of 12 state attorneys general who sued after learning their states would see steep reductions in federal grant money because of their so-called sanctuary policies. The lawsuit challenged the decision to tie homeland security funding to immigration cooperation.
At issue is more than $233 million that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency removed from grants awarded to Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The funding comes from a roughly $1 billion program designed to distribute money based on risk assessments, with most of the funds intended for local police and fire departments.
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The cuts were announced not long after another federal court ruled in a separate case that the government could not condition FEMA disaster aid on a state’s willingness to assist with immigration enforcement.
In a 48-page decision, McElroy concluded that federal officials improperly used immigration policy as a factor in deciding whether to reduce homeland security grants. She criticized the way the funding reductions were calculated.
“What else could defendants’ decisions to cut funding to specific counterterrorism programming by conspicuous round numbered amounts — including by slashing off the millions-place digits of awarded sums — be if not arbitrary and capricious? Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result,” McElroy wrote.
The judge, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore the original funding levels to the states that brought the lawsuit.
“Defendants’ wanton abuse of their role in federal grant administration is particularly troublesome given the fact that they have been entrusted with a most solemn duty: safeguarding our nation and its citizens,” McElroy wrote. “While the intricacies of administrative law and the terms and conditions on federal grants may seem abstract to some, the funding at issue here supports vital counterterrorism and law enforcement programs.”
She also referenced the recent shooting at Brown University, where two students were killed and nine others wounded, noting that the federal grant program plays a critical role in helping communities respond to such emergencies.
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“To hold hostage funding for programs like these based solely on what appear to be defendants’ political whims is unconscionable and, at least here, unlawful,” the Rhode Island-based judge wrote, issuing her decision just over a week after the attack.
The Department of Homeland Security signaled it would challenge the ruling. DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the administration plans to appeal.
“This judicial sabotage threatens the safety of our states, counties, towns, and weakens the entire nation,” McLaughlin said in an AP report. “We will fight to restore these critical reforms and protect American lives.”
Attorneys general who brought the lawsuit welcomed the decision, calling it a necessary check on federal overreach.
“This victory ensures that the Trump Administration cannot punish states that refuse to help carry out its cruel immigration agenda, particularly by denying them lifesaving funding that helps prepare for and respond to disasters and emergencies,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement.
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