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a federal judge in Rhode Island charged on tuesday trump The administration is trying to “intimidate” states into accepting conditions that require them to cooperate on immigration enforcement actions in order to receive disaster funding, after they previously ruled that these actions were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge William Smith, who was appointed by former republican President George W. Bush issued a summary judgment last month, ruling that the Department Homeland Security Conditions cannot be imposed.
Despite the September decision, a coalition of 20 states democratic The Attorney General argued that the agency still attached conditions to the grant with language suggesting that they would apply if the case was “discontinued, canceled, or terminated.”
Smith ordered Homeland Security to permanently stop enforcing those conditions against the plaintiff states. The judge also said the agency must amend the documents to states within seven days to remove language related to compliance with federal immigration law, as well as conditional language related to withholding judgment or eviction.
Smith accused the agency of doing exactly what its order prohibited, saying that “the conditional nature of the fig leaf of the requirement makes little difference.”
“Defendants’ new condition does not constitute a good-faith effort to comply with the order,” Smith wrote. “This is a despicable attempt to bully states into making promises they have no obligation to keep at the risk of serious disaster and losing other funding already appropriated by Congress.”
In their complaint, the states argued that for decades they have relied on federal funding to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. But he argued that the conditions imposed by the Trump administration on committing state resources to immigration enforcement put funding for everything from mitigating earthquake and flood risks to managing active wildfires at risk.
The Department of Homeland Security “seeks to dismantle this emergency management system, holding critical emergency preparedness and response funds hostage unless states promise to devote their scarce criminal enforcement resources and other state agency resources to the federal government’s own function of civil immigration enforcement beyond what state law allows,” the plaintiffs wrote.
They successfully argued that it was not only unconstitutional but that it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
The plaintiffs argued that the agency was simply cutting and pasting language that the judge had rejected as part of a condition of receiving the grant money. “Such relief is necessary to prevent defendants from pressuring states’ local jurisdictions to comply with unlawful terms that are contrary to the states’ own decision-making in this area,” they wrote.
The government had argued that the challenge was insignificant because it had already decided to exclude 12 of the 18 programs from complying with immigration requirements. As for the remaining programs, the government argued that it was a contract dispute that should be resolved in the Court of Federal Claims.
The government said the agency has the right to warn states about conditions, as the decision could be overturned on appeal. “Plaintiffs should not be allowed to circumvent legal enforcement at that point by preventing the inclusion of conditions within the grant terms,” the government wrote.