Trump Wants to Use Federal Workers as Pawns to Block Shutdown

To be eligible for federal funds, states were directed to comply with a number of conditions. For instance, they were to provide federal immigration agents “access to detainees” and “honor requests for cooperation, such as participation in joint operations, sharing of information, or requests for short term detention of an alien pursuant to a valid detainer.” They were also forbidden from operating “any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”

Judge William E. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled in the states’ favor Wednesday, finding the administration’s conditions unconstitutional and in violation of federal law, and ordering them removed.

Smith deemed the immigration-related conditions “unlawfully ambiguous,” “overbroad,” and “unrelated to the underlying programs”—considering the grants “fund programs such as disaster relief, fire safety, dam safety, and emergency preparedness.” Tying the aid to immigration cooperation is also coercive, he said, since “states rely on these grants for billions of dollars annually in disaster relief and public safety funds that cannot be replaced by state revenues.”