A federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration cannot withhold billions of dollars in aid from states that refuse to enforce immigration law.
Judge William E. Smith of the District of Rhode Island, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, sided with 20 Democrat-led states in his decision, Newsweek reported.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) linked Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster relief funds to each state’s compliance with illegal immigration enforcement.
The lawsuit against this action was spearheaded by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and the attorneys general from the other states that reject border security and immigration measures.
“We are experiencing creeping authoritarianism in this country, and as a people we must continue to resist,” Neronha charged.
“Using the safety of Americans as collateral, the Trump administration is once again illegally subverting the Congress, bullying the states to relinquish their right, ensured by the Constitution, to enact policies and laws that best serve their residents.
“By threatening to withhold these congressionally allocated funds, used for projects like fixing highways and preparing for natural disasters, the president is willing to put our collective safety at risk,” he added.
Smith granted a permanent injunction to the enforcement of this rule.
According to the Boston Globe, the DHS guidance originated with a Trump executive order stating that “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which don’t enforce immigration law, should be denied funding from federal agencies, including the DHS and FEMA.
In February, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued guidelines for all agencies under her direction to hold states wishing to receive financial assistance grants to that standard.
The DHS doubled down in March by requiring states receiving grants to certify that they wouldn’t administer any program that “benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration” currently or in the future.
This triggered several states to file lawsuits challenging the DHS’s authority to impose such guidance without a statutory basis.
The attorneys general from California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, and all New England states except New Hampshire joined the lawsuit.
FEMA and the DHS argued that the agencies were given Congressional permission to administer funds as they see fit, including homeland security grants.
The judge disagreed, calling those conditions on funding “unlawfully ambitious” and “hopelessly vague,” Smith said in his 45-page ruling.
“States cannot predict how DHS will interpret these vague terms, yet they risk losing billions in federal funding for any perceived violation,” Smith wrote in his decision.
“Nor did DHS consider the public safety consequences of undermining state emergency budgets in this way,” Smith said.
“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.”
Smith decided that the rule couldn’t be enforced “regardless of DHS’s arguments related to its authority to promulgate them because the contested conditions are both arbitrary and capricious under the APA and unconstitutional under the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the judge wrote.
Smith said that since the states would “suffer irreparable harm,” the only remedy would be “injunctive relief.”
However, that might not be the end of it for the Trump administration.
As attorney Andrew Branca pointed out, the Trump administration has had much success getting these lower court rulings overturned at the Supreme Court.
“Trump is currently 19-0 at the Supreme Court this year alone, and has many more wins at the Court of Appeals level,” the podcast host wrote in a post to X on Wednesday.
“Final judicial losses for Trump? ZERO,” Branca added.
He noted that the “anti-Trump, anti-Constitutional ‘rulings’ of these unelected, tyrannical, inferior, federal district court judges” often don’t stand.
These lower court rulings are so frequently and consistently reversed either by the Court of Appeals or by SCOTUS that it’s not worth the effort to cover them anymore.
Trump is currently 19-0 at the Supreme Court this year alone, and has many more wins at the Court of Appeals… https://t.co/XpEL6vLPdO
— Andrew Branca Show (@LawSelfDefense) September 24, 2025
The court’s ruling means that the DHS rule is not enforceable at the moment, but a reversal on appeal could allow the Trump administration to hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable through funding.
Trump’s agenda includes many avenues for tamping out illegal immigration, and this is just out of a plethora of options that are still on the table.
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