Attorney General Bonta Blocks Trump Administration’s Latest Attempt to Impose Unlawful Immigration Conditions on Public Safety Funding

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today secured an order from the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island enforcing its prior judgment that blocked the Trump Administration’s effort to unlawfully impose immigration conditions on hundreds of millions of dollars in annual U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants. Attorney General Bonta co-led a multistate coalition in filing a motion to enforce the judgment after DHS attempted to impose a new, nearly identical set of immigration conditions on the grants they administer for the 2026 fiscal year. Last year, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition secured a permanent injunction blocking the imposition of these conditions, an injunction which remains in effect and which the Trump Administration’s most recent grant award notices violated. 

“Court after court has rejected the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempts to condition unrelated grant funding on supporting the President’s hateful immigration agenda,” said Attorney General Bonta. “The safety of our communities is not a political bargaining chip. I applaud the court for swiftly reining in this latest attempt by the Trump Administration to circumvent court orders and Congress’ power of the purse.”

California receives funding from DHS every year 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. State and local law enforcement already work closely with federal agencies on the counterterrorism measures that these grants fund.  

In today’s decision, the court determined that the immigration conditions imposed by DHS on fiscal year 2026 funding fall within the scope of the prior judgment, which applied to cover future fiscal years and “materially similar” conditions. As such, the court declared that DHS’s decision to implement the FY 2026 Immigration Conditions violated the 2025 injunction, enjoined DHS from enforcing the FY 2026 Immigration Conditions against the plaintiff states, and ordered DHS to reissue award letters without the challenged conditions.

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

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