Judge Permanently Blocks Immigration Conditions on Public-Safety Grants for Suing States

Status: Confirmed by Jersey Vindicator, Oregon's attorney general and WRNJ. No AP or Reuters byline was found; FinanceTime carried a detailed account that may be a wire rewrite.

Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department exceeded its authority by attaching immigration-enforcement conditions to grants Congress created for state and local criminal justice programs (Jersey Vindicator). The ruling permanently bars the government from enforcing the challenged conditions against the 22 states and the District of Columbia that sued. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport co-led the coalition (WRNJ).

The conditions would have required grant recipients to give immigration authorities access to people in custody suspected of immigration violations and to notify federal officials before releasing them, according to Jersey Vindicator. States argued they were being forced to choose between federal public-safety funding and their own cooperation policies.

Which grants

Jersey Vindicator says Byrne Justice Assistance Grant money is at stake, including about $4.2 million allocated to New Jersey for fiscal year 2025, plus related crisis-intervention funding. FinanceTime reports McConnell's Wednesday decision concerned the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program and Office of Juvenile Justice grants, and that DOJ said an earlier injunction from Trump's first term already blocked similar conditions on Byrne JAG itself. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said the order protects funding that includes about $667,119 for Oregon youth programs (Oregon DOJ).

The dispute began in 2025 when the administration attached similar conditions to more than $1.3 billion in Victims of Crime Act funding and later dropped them after states sued, Jersey Vindicator reports.