President Donald Trump’s administration had previously threatened to withhold disaster relief funds via the Federal Emergency Management Agency if a particular state declined to cooperate with its immigration agenda. After a coalition of Democratic-led states filed a federal lawsuit, a judge in Rhode Island called the Trump plan “coercive and ambiguous” and ruled it unconstitutional.
The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already been under heavy criticism. Just this week, the Department of Homeland Security was forced to explain why it was accused of using a 5-year-old autistic girl as “bait” to capture a man suspected of being in the country illegally. This ruling against Trump’s mass deportation push could not have come at a more inconvenient time.
Per AP, U.S. District Judge William Smith stated that the conditions for Trump’s new policy were “capricious and arbitrary.” In addressing the case brought by a coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general, Smith wrote: “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.”
The case has been in court since May. Two months later, in July, a flood in Texas killed 24 people and caused further tragedy at a girls’ summer camp. The response to that disaster was badly bungled due to cuts at FEMA, making it one of the Trump administration’s worst failures. The response, albeit late and disorganized, eventually came. What this ruling prevents is a scenario where there would be no response at all simply because a state refused to give Trump the cooperation he demanded.
There was also a recent shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas where one detainee was killed and two others remain in critical condition. That incident has been used by the Trump administration as a rallying cry, urging the public to show more sympathy toward the agency. The shooter’s motives are still under investigation, and recent history has shown it’s unwise to jump to conclusions. But the question remains whether framing immigration enforcement as more important than disaster response is the right way to humanize ICE.
Since entering his second term, Trump has unleashed a record number of executive orders. Courts have now partially or fully blocked 139 of them, while 91 more remain pending. He has managed to keep 91 intact after legal challenges. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha celebrated this latest win, saying the judge affirmed the rule of law. With finality, Neronha declared: “Today’s permanent injunction by Judge Smith says, in no uncertain terms, that this Administration may not illegally impose immigration conditions on congressionally allocated federal funding for emergency services like disaster relief and flood mitigation. Case closed.”
Despite this setback, DHS remained defiant. Through spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, the agency maintained that no city or state that prevents them from pursuing “criminal illegal aliens” deserves federal funding. McLaughlin added: “No lawsuit, not this one or any other, is going to stop us from doing that.”
It remains to be seen what McLaughlin’s statement actually means.
