‘Arbitrary and capricious’: US judge blocks linking disaster funds to immigration

Representative image (Picture credit: AP)

A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Wednesday that it is unconstitutional for the Trump administration to require states to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement in order to receive disaster-relief funding overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).US district judge William Smith granted summary judgment to a coalition of 20 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC, who had sued in May, arguing the administration was unlawfully conditioning billions of dollars in emergency aid on compliance with immigration actions.Smith called the policy “arbitrary and capricious” and said it was coercive, ambiguous, and unrelated to the purpose of the federal grants, according to news agency AP.“Plaintiff States stand to suffer irreparable harm; the effect of the loss of emergency and disaster funds cannot be recovered later, and the downstream effect on disaster response and public safety are real and not compensable,” Smith wrote. According to news agency Reuters, he further noted that states “face a dilemma: either certify compliance with contested federal immigration policies or risk losing critical emergency and disaster-relief funding”. Rhode Island attorney general Peter Neronha hailed the ruling as a “win for the rule of law,” saying it reaffirmed that the president cannot “pick and choose which laws he and his Administration obey”. California Attorney General Rob Bonta added that the decision protects access to department of homeland security grants used for public safety and terrorism prevention.The lawsuit arose after homeland security secretary Kristi Noem issued a February directive threatening to withhold federal disaster funds from states that did not cooperate with immigration enforcement, even if state laws barred such cooperation, according to The New York Times. The plaintiffs argued that for decades, states relied on federal funding to prepare for and respond to disasters, and conditioning these grants on immigration cooperation jeopardised essential services from flood mitigation to wildfire management.Smith also ruled that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and implement regulations. He wrote that DHS had “failed to provide a reasoned explanation, failed to consider the reliance interests of the states, and departed from longstanding funding practices without adequate justification”.A spokesperson for DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, responded to the ruling, asserting that “cities and states who break the law and prevent us from arresting criminal illegal aliens should not receive federal funding” and maintaining the administration’s commitment to “restoring the rule of law”.Another federal judge in Rhode Island blocked a similar move by the department of transportation in June.