States accuse feds of tying crime victim funding to deportation compliance

(CN) — A coalition of 21 state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Monday, claiming the Department of Justice is trying to “strong-arm” them into complying with mass deportations by dangling federal funding for the Victims of Crime Act over their heads.

In a 50-page lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island, the states accuse the Justice Department of illegally attaching this new condition to the funding, which is designed to provide services to violent crime survivors.

“The federal government is attempting to use crime victim funds as a bargaining chip to force states into doing its bidding on immigration enforcement,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Monday announcing the suit. “These grants were created to help survivors heal and recover, and we will fight to ensure they continue to serve that purpose.”

Congress enacted the Victims of Crime Act more than four decades ago, creating a series of grant programs aimed at providing victims of violent crime with recovery services like emergency shelters, sexual assault forensic exams, funeral and medical expenses, compensation for lost wages and advocacy efforts.

Millions of victims use these services every year. In the suing states alone, they claim that this funding assisted more than 2.8 million crime victims in 2024.

The act has only expanded since it was originally enacted in 1984 — in the early 2000s, Congress added funding streams to bolster the services fund after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The funds are doled out using a fixed statutory formula to ensure that state compensation programs are eligible for the grants.

But the states claim that changed last month when the government announced it would be withholding funding from the states who don’t comply with the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.

“Defendant’s brazen attempt to manipulate critical funding for crime victims to strong-arm states into supporting the administration’s immigration policies runs headlong into two basic principles of American governance: separation of powers and federalism,” the states argue in the lawsuit.

They claim this is part of a broader effort from the Trump administration to illegally use funds to try to force the hands of Democratic states.

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “ensure that so-called ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions … do not receive access to federal funds.” In February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo directing the Justice Department to take a variety of efforts to punish “sanctuary jurisdictions” for refusing to assist with federal deportations.

The states claim the Office for Victims of Crime — an office within the Justice Department responsible for dispersing the victim services funds — issued new immigration requirements in July pursuant to these orders from Bondi and the president.

It’s unlawful for multiple reasons, according to the states. They argue the new requirements are arbitrary and capricious, and, like many other Trump-era funding cuts, violate Congress’ power of the purse.

“Further, given the coercive nature of the challenged conditions, their ambiguity, and lack of relatedness to the underlying grant programs at issue, they run afoul of the spending clause as well,” the states add in their bid for a court order blocking the enforcement of the immigration requirement.

The coalition consists of New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, Delaware, Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

New York alone claims it stands to lose more than $212 million in funding for victim services, cash that every year goes toward rape kits, medical care, crime scene cleanup, relocations, counseling and transportation to court.

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has threatened to pull federal grants to push its immigration agenda. Its efforts have been scrutinized by federal courts thus far.

In May, multistate coalitions sued the government for holding emergency relief and transit funding hostage over immigration policy in a similar fashion. One federal judge in Rhode Island, when ruling on the transit funding, found that greenlighting this behavior from the administration could allow it to force states to comply with almost any federal initiative, no matter how unpopular or unlawful.

“Congress appropriated those funds for transportation purposes, not immigration enforcement purposes,” U.S. District Judge John McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled in June.

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