Attorney General Tong Wins Court Order Protecting Billions in Federal Emergency Services Funding

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09/25/2025

Attorney General Tong Wins Court Order Protecting Billions in Federal Emergency Services Funding

(Hartford, CT) -- Attorney General William Tong today announced Connecticut has won a court order prohibiting the Trump administration from illegally coercing states into performing federal immigration enforcement functions by threatening to withhold billions in funding for emergency preparedness and preventing and addressing terrorist attacks, mass shootings, wildfires, floods, cybersecurity threats and more.

The District Court for the District of Rhode Island on Wednesday granted a motion for summary judgement filed by Attorney General Tong and 20 attorneys general in their lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In its opinion, the court held that the agencies violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act by conditioning all federal funds from FEMA and DHS on states’ agreement to assist in enforcing federal immigration law.

“You cannot play politics with disaster relief. Not with lives and communities on the line. We sued, and this decision is a decisive victory for public safety and our sovereign states. This decision states unequivocally that Donald Trump’s baseless actions were once again arbitrary and capricious (the same legal smack down we just saw in the Revolution Wind win) and that he had zero authority to override the will of Congress. We’re going to keep fighting and we’re going to keep winning to stop Trump from defunding our states,” said Attorney General Tong.

In February, Secretary Noem directed DHS and its sub-agencies, including FEMA, to cease federal funding to jurisdictions that do not assist the federal government in the enforcement of federal immigration law. In March, DHS amended the terms and conditions it places on all federal funds to require recipients to certify that they will assist in enforcing federal immigration law. These sweeping new conditions would require states and state agencies to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts or lose out on billions of federal dollars that states use to protect public safety.

In this decision, the court agreed that DHS violated the Administrative Procedure Act in adding the conditions, including because the agency failed to consider public safety in doing so and because the conditions are overly broad and ambiguous. The court further found that the conditions violate the Constitution’s Spending Clause. The court rejected DHS’ argument that placing immigration-related conditions on the grant funding was appropriate simply because many of the grants are designed to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism. Instead, the court determined that DHS made no serious attempt to provide a fact-based reason for its action. In fact, the court found that the “vague and confusing language” used in the conditions made it nearly impossible for states to comply.

In filing the lawsuit, Attorney General Tong and the coalition argued that the immigration conditions exceed DHS’s legal authority and violate the Constitution because the programs in question were established to help states prepare for, protect against, respond to and recover from catastrophic disasters, not for immigration-related purposes. The district court agreed, holding that imposing the condition on all DHS and FEMA programs, regardless of the purpose of those programs, was unlawful.

Since 2021, Connecticut has received more than $1.2 billion from FEMA to prevent, protect against and respond to flooding and other natural disasters, terrorism, mass casualty events, and other catastrophes. These conditions would also damage the carefully built trust between law enforcement and immigrant communities that is critical to promoting public safety.

The lawsuit, co-led by the attorneys general of California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, was joined by the attorneys general from Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Vermont.

Twitter: @AGWilliamTong

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Media Contact:

Elizabeth Benton
elizabeth.benton@ct.gov

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