A federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice cannot condition police and crime-victim grants on states cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, handing a major courtroom defeat to the Trump administration's effort to use federal funding as leverage over Democratic-led states.
Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., sitting in Providence, ruled from the bench on Wednesday in favor of 22 states and the District of Columbia, which had argued that the conditions the Justice Department imposed on the grants were unlawful. The New Jersey attorney general's office, which co-led the coalition, said the judge declared the conditions unlawful and permanently barred their implementation or enforcement.
The Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Providence, Rhode Island. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress, public domain.
What the judge decided
The ruling blocks the Justice Department from enforcing immigration-cooperation conditions on the grants for the states that brought the lawsuit. Reuters reported that the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.
The case, State of New Jersey et al v. United States Department of Justice, was heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. It is one of a series of lawsuits in which Democratic state attorneys general and advocacy groups have challenged the administration's attempts to require grant recipients to align with its priorities in order to receive federal money.
The conditions at the center of the case
Under the challenged conditions, states seeking the grants were required to cooperate with federal civil immigration enforcement. That included giving federal authorities access to people in state custody suspected of living in the United States illegally, notifying the Department of Homeland Security before such people were released, and complying with requirements concerning immigration-related information.
The affected programs include the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants, which provide criminal justice funding to state and local governments, and grants under the Victims of Crime Act, which support crime victims. The lawsuit began in August 2025 as a challenge to immigration-related conditions placed on access to more than $1.3 billion in Victims of Crime Act funding.
Why the states sued
The states argued that Congress created these grant programs, with their own formulas and eligibility rules, to support criminal law enforcement, juvenile justice and victim services — and never authorized the Justice Department to add immigration-enforcement cooperation as a price of admission.
State officials said the conditions forced an impossible choice: give up funding that pays for police departments, prosecutors, crime prevention and youth programs, or hand over a state responsibility — civil immigration enforcement — that they said belongs to the federal government. In Oregon, officials said the ruling protects $667,119 for youth programs run through the state's education department. New Jersey was allocated about $4.2 million in Byrne grants for fiscal year 2025, according to local reporting on the case.
What happens next
For the plaintiff states, the decision removes the challenged conditions as a barrier to the affected grants, though the administration could still appeal the ruling. The decision does not by itself settle the wider fight over federal funding conditions, which is playing out in multiple lawsuits across the country, and it does not change the underlying immigration policies at issue — only whether grant money can be used to compel state cooperation with them.
Coming a day after voters delivered Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, the ruling also adds to the legal headwinds facing the administration's immigration agenda, even as the White House retains broad executive authority over federal enforcement itself.
Sources: Reuters; New Jersey Office of the Attorney General; Oregon Department of Justice.