20 states sue Trump administration over linking funds to immigration enforcement

NEW YORK, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Twenty U.S. states on Tuesday jointly filed two lawsuits against the White House over placing immigration enforcement as a condition to obtain federal funds.

California, New York, Rhode Island and 17 other states filed the lawsuits at the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island targeting the Department of Transportation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management, the United States Coast Guard and top-ranking officials in charge of the four entities.

The DHS and its sub-agencies "seek to upend this emergency management system, holding critical emergency preparedness and response funding hostage unless States promise to devote their scarce criminal enforcement resources, and other state agency resources, to the federal government's own task of civil immigration enforcement," said the attorneys general in one lawsuit.

"Defendants' grant funding hostage scheme violates 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," they added.

A letter by U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on April 24 was highlighted in the second lawsuit. Duffy said states could lose transportation funding if they fail to comply with immigration enforcement or maintain diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump on April 28 directed the U.S. attorney general and the secretary of homeland security to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that obstruct enforcement of federal immigration laws and identify appropriate federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions for "suspension or termination."

"No funding has been withheld ... These 20 states are challenging the terms of their grant agreements because their officials want to continue breaking federal law and putting the needs of illegal aliens above their own citizens," said Duffy in a statement.

In April, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administration's funding freeze for a group of 16 cities and counties on the grounds that these local governments do not comply with federal immigration enforcement.