Overview
- U.S. District Judge William E. Smith ruled Oct. 14 that DHS and FEMA violated his September order by reissuing grant terms that effectively tied funding to state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
- New award letters repeated the struck conditions with a clause making them operative if the ruling were stayed or overturned, which the judge called a "fig leaf" and a "ham-handed attempt to bully" states.
- The order bars FEMA from enforcing the contested provisions or any materially similar terms and requires DHS to remove all references to immigration compliance from grant documents.
- A coalition of 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia brought the case, citing risks to more than $1 billion across programs such as the Emergency Management Performance Grant, the Homeland Security Grant Program, and the Port Security Grant Program.
- The administration said the conditional language preserved enforcement if an appeal succeeded, but court records as of Tuesday showed no notice of appeal filed.