Judge blocks Trump move to cut Homeland Security funds over sanctuary policies

Judge halts Trump funding cuts

A federal judge has halted the Trump administration’s effort to divert Homeland Security funding away from states that decline to cooperate with certain federal immigration enforcement measures.

US District Judge Mary McElroy ruled on Monday in favour of a coalition of 12 attorneys general who sued earlier this year after being warned their states would face steep grant cuts because of their “sanctuary” status.

Altogether, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had cut more than USD 233 million from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The funding forms part of a USD 1 billion programme meant to be distributed based on assessed risk, with most of the money passed on to police and fire departments.

The reductions were announced soon after another federal judge, in a separate case, ruled it unconstitutional for Washington to condition FEMA disaster funding on state cooperation with immigration enforcement.

In her 48-page decision, McElroy said the federal government had factored states’ policing of federal immigration laws into decisions on whether to cut funding under the Homeland Security Grant Program and related schemes.

“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 Trump-appointed judge then ordered the Department of Homeland Security to restore the previously announced funding allocations to the plaintiff states.

“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.” McElroy notably cited the recent Brown University attack, where a gunman killed two students and injured nine others, as an event where the USD 1 billion federal program would be vital in responding to such a tragedy.

“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 in her ruling, issued little more than a week after the Brown shooting.

Emails seeking comment were sent to the DHS and FEMA.

“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,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell in a statement.