Wednesday, November 11, 2026 America First. Truth First. America Always.
AFNSAmerica First News Syndicate
Courts & Legal Status: Order entered Nov. 9 as to plaintiff states; no DHS comment on this order found; no source in the record says DHS will appeal this ruling

Judge McElroy Rules DHS Violated Injunction by Attaching Immigration Conditions to FY2026 Grants

By AFNS Research Desk · · 2 min read

The Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island (file image)
Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

Status: Judge McElroy granted the plaintiff states' motion to enforce on Nov. 9. The order is limited to those states and their subdivisions. AFNS found no DHS comment on this order, and no source in the record states that DHS will appeal it.

U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy of the District of Rhode Island ruled on Nov. 9 that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency violated a permanent injunction she entered in October 2025 by attaching a new set of immigration-related conditions to grants for fiscal year 2026 (order PDF). The case is Illinois v. FEMA, No. 1:25-cv-00206.

The October 2025 injunction barred the defendants from enforcing the original contested conditions, related "Compliance with Federal Immigration Law" award articles, and "any materially similar term requiring cooperation with federal immigration enforcement as a condition on federal funds" against the plaintiff states and their instrumentalities and subdivisions. The court found that seven of the FY2026 conditions are identical or nearly identical to the earlier ones, and that an eighth "Fusion Center Condition" is also materially similar. Imposing them, the court said, violated the injunction. The defendants had not moved to dissolve that injunction. The order notes that they earlier appealed the October 2025 injunction and then dropped that appeal; that history concerns the prior order, not a stated plan to appeal this one.

Remedy, and who it covers

The court declared that implementing the FY2026 conditions violated the October 2025 injunction; enjoined enforcement of those conditions against the plaintiff states, including their subdivisions and instrumentalities; and ordered the defendants to reissue award letters under the relevant grant programs without the FY2026 immigration conditions.

The caption lists 20 plaintiff states, including Illinois, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. The injunction runs in their favor, not as a nationwide bar. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who co-led the coalition, also listed the District of Columbia among those joined in the lawsuit; the court's caption names the 20 states.

Bonta said: "Court after court has rejected the Trump Administration's unlawful attempts to condition unrelated grant funding on supporting the President's hateful immigration agenda." He added, "The safety of our communities is not a political bargaining chip." His office says the grants include counterterrorism, urban-area security, emergency-preparedness, and cybersecurity funding.

A related, earlier case in the same district over Justice Department public-safety grant conditions is covered separately: Judge Permanently Blocks Immigration Conditions on Public-Safety Grants for Suing States.

Related

Sources

  1. Court order (California AG PDF) oag.ca.gov
  2. California AG press release, Nov. 9 oag.ca.gov

See our sourcing & corrections standards.

Share on X

Spotted an error? Tell us — see our corrections policy.

More from Courts & Legal

All →
Courts & LegalMotion to dismiss the defamation claim denied; unfair-trade claim dismissed; case is not decided on the merits

Florida Judge Lets Trump's Defamation Claim Against the BBC Proceed, Dismisses Unfair-Trade Count

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz of the Southern District of Florida on Tuesday denied the BBC's motion to dismiss President Trump's defamation claim over a Panorama documentary that spliced two clips, taken about 55 minutes apart, from his Jan. 6, 2021, speech. The ruling is not a decision on the merits. Kuntz dismissed a Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act claim, finding the documentary is not commercial speech, and ordered the BBC to answer the defamation count by Dec. 1.

· AFNS Research Desk

Courts & LegalPublished Ninth Circuit opinion in Dickinson v. Trump, No. 26-1609, filed Nov. 10; preliminary injunction and provisional class certification vacated

Ninth Circuit Vacates Injunction Limiting Crowd-Control Force at Portland ICE Facility

A divided Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday vacated a preliminary injunction that had restricted federal officers' use of tear gas, pepper balls, and other non-lethal munitions at the South Portland ICE facility, and it decertified a provisional protester class. Judge Kenneth K. Lee, joined by Judge Eric C. Tung, wrote that agents may use non-lethal force to disperse a crowd and need not wait for an imminent threat of physical harm, and that the record did not show First Amendment retaliation. Judge Ana de Alba concurred in part and dissented in part, saying she would have kept a ban on firing munitions at the head, neck, or torso.

· AFNS Research Desk

Courts & LegalNov. 10 panel opinion, as reported by Politico and Bloomberg Law; case remains partly sealed; opinion PDF was not retrieved from the court's public site

Fourth Circuit Holds DOJ's Demand for Journalists' LinkedIn Records in a Leak Probe Too Broad

A Fourth Circuit panel, in an opinion by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, held that sealed orders requiring LinkedIn to give the Justice Department 18 months of journalists' metadata in a national-security leak investigation were too broad and must be narrowed, Politico and Bloomberg Law report. Wilkinson wrote that the search would "deal a damaging blow to First Amendment freedoms," Politico reported. The ruling does not bar a narrower demand. The government's interest in investigating leaks is noted below.

· AFNS Research Desk