Twelve states are suing the Trump administration for putting up barriers to emergency aid, saying the changes are illegal and threaten states’ ability to respond to natural disasters.
The lawsuit is the latest challenge against the administration’s effort to push states to cooperate with immigration authorities as a condition of receiving federal disaster and homeland security grants.
It comes just a month after a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled the administration had violated a court order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to remove certain conditions for states to accept grants, assailing the federal government’s “ham-handed attempt to bully” states into cooperating with immigration authorities.
Filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the latest lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency accuses the agencies of imposing “inappropriate barriers” to states’ access to two funds. The money includes the Emergency Management Performance Grant program, which pays the salaries of state disaster responders.
