Federal judge says Trump administration must return disaster money to Democratic states

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to reallocate federal Homeland Security funds from states that refuse to cooperate with certain federal immigration measures.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy’s ruling Monday cemented a victory for the coalition of 12 attorneys general that sued the administration earlier this year after being alerted that their states would receive drastically reduced federal grants because of their “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

In total, the US Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency reduced more than $233 million from Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. The money is part of a billion-dollar program in which allocations are supposed to be based on assessed risks, and then states largely shift most of the money to police and fire departments.

The cuts were unveiled shortly after an independent federal judge, in a separate legal challenge, ruled that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to cooperate in immigration enforcement actions to obtain disaster funds from FEMA.

In his 48-page ruling, McElroy found that the federal government was weighing state police enforcement of federal immigration law against the possibility of reducing federal funding for the Homeland Security Grant Program and others.

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“What else could the defendants’ decisions to cut funding to specific counterterrorism programs by eye-catching, round-the-clock amounts (even removing the single digits of millions from the sums awarded) be if they are not arbitrary and capricious? It does not require a degree in law or mathematics 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 previously announced funding allocations to the plaintiff states.

“The defendants’ wanton abuse of their role in administering federal grants is particularly troubling given the fact that they have been entrusted with a very solemn duty: safeguarding our nation and its citizens,” McElroy wrote. “While the complexities of administrative law and the terms and conditions of federal grants may seem abstract to some, the funding in question supports vital counterterrorism and law enforcement programs.”

McElroy cited in particular the recent attack on Brown University, where a gunman killed two students and wounded nine others, as an event in which the billion-dollar federal program would be vital to responding to such a tragedy.

“Holding funding for programs like these hostage based solely on what appear to be the political whims of the defendants is unconscionable and, at least in this case, illegal,” the Rhode Island-based judge wrote in her ruling, issued just over a week after the Brown shooting.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the department plans to fight the order.

“This judicial sabotage threatens the security of our states, counties and cities and weakens the entire nation,” McLaughlin said. “We will fight to restore these critical reforms and protect American lives.”

Meanwhile, the attorneys general who sued the administration applauded the order.

“This victory ensures that the Trump Administration cannot punish states that refuse to help carry out its cruel immigration agenda, particularly by denying them life-saving funds that help prepare for and respond to disasters and emergencies,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement.