AI Generated Image (not an actual DHS award letter)
A federal judge in Rhode Island has blocked the Homeland Security Department from attaching FEMA immigration conditions to its 2026 preparedness and counterterrorism grants for 20 states and the District of Columbia. In an order signed Nov. 9, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy ruled that the new conditions are covered by an injunction the court issued in October 2025, and she ordered DHS to reissue the states’ award letters without them.
The ruling matters less for what it says about immigration enforcement than for what it says about time. DHS rewrote its grant terms for a new fiscal year, and the court held that a fresh year does not reset the dispute. For the plaintiff states, the 2025 judgment now governs later award cycles too, unless the government shows a change in the law or the facts.
Why the FY 2026 conditions fell under a 2025 order
The case, Illinois v. FEMA, began in 2025. On Sept. 24, 2025, the court granted summary judgment to the states, holding that DHS’s fiscal 2025 conditions were arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act and violated the Spending Clause because they were not reasonably related to the purpose of the grants, were unduly coercive and were unlawfully ambiguous. The injunction that followed in October 2025 barred enforcement of those terms and of “any materially similar term requiring cooperation with federal immigration enforcement as a condition on federal funds.”
That clause did the work this week. Judge McElroy wrote that it “is unambiguously broad and contains no temporal limitation,” so it is “not cabined to the FY 2025 grants.” She found that seven of the eight fiscal 2026 conditions were “either identical or nearly identical” to the ones already struck down. The eighth was new: a requirement that state-owned fusion centers, the intelligence-sharing hubs that states run with federal partners, “coordinate with DHS in matters related to immigration enforcement.” The court held that it, too, was materially similar to an earlier DHS-cooperation condition.
The order also notes that DHS appealed the 2025 rulings and then dropped that appeal, and never asked the court to dissolve the injunction, which would have required showing a change in fact or law. That left only one question: whether the new terms fit inside it.
How much money is at stake is not stated in the order. Smart Cities Dive reported in October that the states’ motion concerned nearly $1 billion in counterterrorism and emergency management funds across nine fiscal 2026 grant programs. Law360 first reported the ruling on Nov. 10.
Who is covered, and what DHS can still do
The relief reaches only the plaintiffs: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia, along with their subdivisions and instrumentalities. States that did not sue still receive awards carrying the conditions. The order does not set a deadline for the reissued award letters.
The order does not touch the underlying enforcement tools at issue in related fights, such as ICE detainers or 287(g) agreements. It decides only whether DHS may make cooperation a condition of these grants. That is the same question that drove a separate ruling this month blocking Justice Department immigration conditions on Byrne JAG public safety grants, and it sits alongside local battles over Philadelphia’s detainer policy, New York’s ban on 287(g) agreements and Houston’s ICE cooperation order.
The two sides describe the stakes very differently. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement after the ruling that “the safety of our communities is not a political bargaining chip.” When the states filed their motion in October, a FEMA spokesperson called the lawsuit “another attempt to obstruct President Trump’s agenda,” according to Smart Cities Dive.
DHS can appeal the new order to the First Circuit, but having dropped its earlier appeal, it would be contesting the reach of the injunction rather than the 2025 merits ruling. The “materially similar” language makes lightly reworded conditions unlikely to survive in this court, so a lasting change would probably require new statutory authority from Congress or a successful motion to dissolve the injunction. Until then, any recycled immigration term in a future award to these states is likely to end up back before Judge McElroy.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Order granting plaintiff states’ second motion to enforce, Illinois v. FEMA, No. 1:25-cv-00206 (D.R.I. Nov. 9, 2026)
- Law360: States Win 2nd Bid To Block New FEMA Immigration Terms (Nov. 10, 2026)
- Smart Cities Dive: FEMA violating court order on $1B in public safety grants, states’ lawsuit says (Oct. 12, 2026)
- Statement of California Attorney General Rob Bonta on the order (Nov. 9, 2026)
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