A coalition of 21 attorneys general, including Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, won their lawsuit over attempts to withhold nearly $2 billion in disaster relief funds from states with sanctuary cities, according to court documents.
The District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted summary judgment — where a case is ended without trial based on the mutually agreed upon facts — for the attorneys general against the Department of Homeland Security.
Judge William E. Smith rejected the “arbitrary and capricious” conditions laid out by President Donald Trump’s administration regarding immigration enforcement, saying the order was unconstitutional and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Today’s opinion acknowledges that the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and that the financial pressure the Trump administration is attempting to exert amounts to ‘economic dragooning,’” Raoul said in a news release. “The court’s ruling will ensure vital dollars that states rely on to prepare for and respond to emergencies are not withheld simply for political purposes. The rule of law matters, and I will continue to join with my colleagues to hold the administration accountable when it violates the law or our Constitution.”
Following an executive order from Trump, which attempted to “ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions do not receive access to federal funds,” the Department of Homeland Security issued new requirements for certain grants.
It tried to force states to coordinate and cooperate with federal immigration officials by working on joint operations, allowing federal agents access to people detained by local law enforcement, sharing information with federal agencies and not leaking information about immigration enforcement in exchange for Homeland Security grants.
The federal government argued its new conditions were valid because some of the grants related to terrorism prevention — which in turn was sometimes connected to immigration enforcement ‚ though Smith wrote in his decision that the conditions set on the funding made complying “a nearly impossible-to-achieve moving target.” He also said setting the prerequisites for disaster funding made the changes illegally coercive.
“With these conditions, states are left to guess at what conduct satisfies the requirements under threat of losing billions in essential funding,” Smith wrote. “Nor did DHS consider the public safety consequences of undermining state emergency budgets in this way. As a result, the conditions not only jeopardize states’ fiscal planning but also threaten their capacity to protect public safety in the areas where federal and state cooperation is most critical.”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said states with sanctuary laws on the books “should not receive federal funding” and that the administration was determined to detain and deport immigrants without legal status in the U.S.
“No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that,” McLaughlin said.