The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
States don’t have to help enforce the Trump administration’s immigration policies to get disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a federal judge in Providence ruled Wednesday.
Senior U.S. District Judge William E. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted a motion for a permanent injunction against the Department of Homeland Security, calling a federal directive issued in April “coercive, ambiguous, unrelated to the purpose of the federal grants, and undermine[s] the system of federalism.”
The directive made enforcing the administration’s immigration detention policy agenda a condition for receiving federal disaster relief aid.
“States rely on these grants for billions of dollars annually in disaster relief,” wrote Smith, a George W. Bush appointee. “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.”
A group of 20 Democratic states attorneys general filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security in May, claiming the agency lacked the legal authority to require states to abide by immigration policy in order to receive funding.
They argued in their initial lawsuit that not only was the policy unconstitutional, but violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Like all Democratic lawsuits, the AGs called the decision “arbitrary and capricious.” The Department of Homeland Security disagreed, arguing that conditions align with its core mission of enforcing federal immigration law.
But that was not enough of a justification for Smith.
“Such platitudes cannot substitute for an actual explanation of why it is necessary to attach sweeping immigration conditions to all the grants at issue here,” he wrote.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha called Smith’s ruling a “win for the rule of law” and reaffirmed that President Donald Trump cannot pick and choose what federal laws to follow.
“Today’s permanent injunction by Judge Smith says, in no uncertain terms, that this Administration may not illegally impose immigration conditions on congressionally allocated federal funding for emergency services like disaster relief and flood mitigation,” Neronha said in a statement. “Case closed.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to request for comment.
This story was originally produced by Rhode Island Current, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes NC Newsline, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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