Dive Brief:
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A coalition of states and the District of Columbia filed a motion last week requesting that a district court enforce its previous ruling enjoining the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency from conditioning nearly $1 billion in counterterrorism and emergency management funds on the states’ assistance in enforcing federal immigration law.
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The U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled on Sept. 24, 2025, that FEMA violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act by making “arbitrary and capricious” decisions to condition the funds and issued a permanent injunction enjoining DHS from enforcing the conditions. “DHS and FEMA have now ignored that injunction and imposed immigration-cooperation conditions — many identical to those imposed in Fiscal Year 2025 — on nine Fiscal Year 2026 grant programs,” according to the states’ motion.
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A FEMA spokesperson said in an email to Smart Cities Dive that while FEMA doesn’t comment on pending litigation, “this lawsuit is another attempt to obstruct President Trump’s agenda and the will of the American people.”
Dive Insight:
On Oct. 14, 2025, less than a month after the court issued its permanent injunction against FEMA, Senior District Judge William Smith ruled that FEMA had violated his Sept. 24 order to remove the conditions. Instead of removing them, FEMA had inserted the conditions into award letters and stated that if Smith’s injunction was stayed, vacated or extinguished, the conditions would immediately become effective.
Smith called it “a ham-handed attempt to bully the states into making promises they have no obligation to make at the risk of losing critical disaster and other funding already appropriated by Congress.”
Shortly after the states won the summary judgment, FEMA reduced funding awards and the period of performance. It also required states to explain the methodology for their population counts and certify that the counts do not include people removed from the state under immigration laws. The states sued, and the federal court granted their motion for summary judgment on Dec. 22, 2025.
The states sued FEMA again on July 23, saying the same conditions that were added in fiscal year 2025, as well as new conditions, had been added. That case is ongoing.
“Despite our winning two similar lawsuits this past year to protect the same federal funding that is in jeopardy today, the Trump administration continues its wholly improper efforts to use federal public-safety funds as a means to push its political and policy priorities,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a news release. ”I will continue to stand with my colleagues against the Trump administration’s illegal and dangerous attempts to coerce states into compliance with the president’s political agenda.”
"FEMA should not be permitted to serially reissue substantively identical immigration conditions year after year and force States to litigate each set of substantively identical terms on a blank slate," the states’ Oct. 7 motion claims.
Last month, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia ruled FEMA’s attempt to withhold or cancel more than $200 million in public safety grants unless states and local governments agreed to alter how they run elections was unlawful.
