Attorney General Bonta Sues U.S. Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security Over Illegal Immigration Enforcement Conditions on Grant Funding

California receives over $15.7 billion in transportation grants and around $20 billion in homeland security grants annually 

OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta today filed two lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s effort to unlawfully impose immigration enforcement requirements on billions of dollars in annual U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) grants. These grants are unrelated to federal civil immigration enforcement. Attorney General Bonta is leading a coalition of 20 states in filing the DHS lawsuit alongside the attorneys general of Illinois, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, and is leading the same coalition in filing the DOT lawsuit, alongside the attorneys general of Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland. In the lawsuits, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that imposing this new set of conditions across a range of grant programs is arbitrary and capricious, exceeds the Trump Administration’s legal authority, and violates the Spending Clause.

“President Trump doesn’t have the authority to unlawfully coerce state and local governments into using their resources for federal immigration enforcement – and his latest attempt to bully them into doing so is blatantly illegal,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Let’s be clear about what’s happening here: The President is threatening to yank funds to improve our roads, keep our planes in the air, prepare for emergencies, and protect against terrorist attacks if states do not fall in line with his demands. He’s treating these funds, which have nothing to do with immigration enforcement and everything to do with the safety of our communities, as a bargaining chip. But this is not a game. I’ll continue taking the President to court each time he breaks the law and puts Californians’ interests on the line.” 

California receives over $15.7 billion in grant funding from DOT to support and maintain the roads, highways, railways, airways, and bridges that connect our communities and carry our residents to their workplaces and their homes. This includes $5.7 billion in funding to maintain and build highways. It also includes $2 billion in funding for transit systems in urban and rural communities across the state — including buses, subways, light rail, commuter rail, trolleys, and ferries. Neither the purpose of these grants, nor their grant criteria, are in any way connected to immigration enforcement. 

California also receives around $20 billion in funding from DHS to prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks and other catastrophes. This includes counterterrorism grants, grants that allow states to prepare for terrorism in high-concentration urban areas, emergency preparedness grants, cybersecurity grants, and many others that are similarly not connected to civil immigration enforcement. And state and local law enforcement already work closely with federal agencies on the counterterrorism measures that these grants fund.  

The Constitution is clear: Congress, not the President, decides how federal money is spent. And for decades, Congress has passed laws guaranteeing funding to states like California to protect their security and improve their roads — funds that the federal government generally has by virtue of the taxes paid to it by states like California. Yet despite the constraints imposed by Congress and the Constitution, the Trump Administration is attempting to seize Congress’s power of the purse by imposing an immigration-enforcement conditions on transportation and homeland security grants. In doing so, the Trump Administration is violating two key principles that underlie the American system of checks and balances: agencies in the Executive Branch cannot act contrary to the authority conferred on them by Congress, and the federal government cannot use the spending power to coerce states into adopting its preferred policies.

In filing today’s lawsuits, Attorney General Bonta and the multistate coalition seek to prevent the Trump Administration from imposing immigration-enforcement conditions on any DOT or DHS grants unless the department provides the specific statutory authority that permits it to do so. 

Attorney General Bonta is joined by the attorneys general of Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin in filing the lawsuits. 

A copy of the DOT lawsuit is available here. A copy of the DHS lawsuit is available here.