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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today announced an important victory in a multistate lawsuit he joined against the Trump administration over its attempt to illegally coerce states into sweeping immigration enforcement by threatening to withhold billions in federal funding for emergency preparedness, and for preventing and addressing terrorist attacks, mass shootings, wildfires, floods, cybersecurity threats and more.
The District Court for the District of Rhode Island today granted a motion for summary judgment filed by Attorney General Brown and 20 attorneys general in their lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In its opinion, the court held that the agencies violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act when they threatened to condition all federal funds from FEMA and DHS on states’ agreement to assist in enforcing federal immigration law.
“This ruling not only preserves tens of millions of dollars in federal funding that helps Marylanders and their communities recover from devastating natural disasters – it also stops Maryland from having to break its own laws to acquire these essential resources,” said Attorney General Brown. “Maryland fully complies with federal immigration law, but the Trump administration's coercive conditions exceeded federal requirements and would have forced Maryland to violate its own laws that regulate state and local cooperation with immigration authorities.”
In February, Secretary Kristi Noem directed DHS and its sub-agencies, including FEMA, to cease federal funding to jurisdictions that do not assist the federal government in the enforcement of federal immigration law. In March, DHS amended the terms and conditions it places on all federal funds to require recipients to certify that they will assist in enforcing federal immigration law. These sweeping new conditions would require states and state agencies to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts or lose out on billions of federal dollars that states use to protect public safety.
In today’s decision, the court agreed that DHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act in adding the conditions, including because the agency failed to consider public safety in doing so and because the conditions are overly broad and ambiguous. The court further found that the conditions violate the Constitution’s Spending Clause. The court rejected DHS’ argument that placing immigration-related conditions on the grant funding was appropriate simply because many of the grants are designed to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism. Instead, the court determined that DHS made no serious attempt to provide a fact-based reason for its action. In fact, the court found that the “vague and confusing language” used in the conditions made it nearly impossible for states to comply.
In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Brown and the coalition argued that the immigration conditions exceed DHS’s legal authority and violate the Constitution because the programs in question were established to help states prepare for, protect against, respond to and recover from catastrophic disasters, not for immigration-related purposes. The district court agreed, holding that imposing the condition on all DHS and FEMA programs, regardless of the purpose of those programs, was unlawful.
Joining Attorney General Brown in filing the lawsuit were the attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and Vermont.
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