A judge has called on the Trump administration to revise its grant requirements by next week, nixing immigration demands.By ReutersPublished On 14 Oct 202514 Oct 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareA federal judge in the United States has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump has violated a previous court order by implementing a nearly identical policy that again made state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement a condition for receiving grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).On Tuesday, District Judge William Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, wrote that the Department of Homeland Security had done precisely what his September 24 ruling forbade when it imposed new immigration-related conditions that states must accept before they may obtain emergency preparedness grants from FEMA.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listIn his earlier ruling, the judge had struck down conditions the department originally had imposed on grant awards.At the time, 20 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia had argued the restrictions were designed to coerce them into adhering to the Republican president’s hardline immigration crackdown.After Smith’s initial ruling, the administration issued new grant award documents to the states with nearly identical immigration enforcement conditions but with a clause saying they would only become effective if Smith’s ruling was stayed or overturned.Smith said the “fig leaf conditional nature of the requirement makes little difference” as the administration was again unlawfully forcing the states to agree to assist in federal immigration enforcement or else forgo millions of dollars in funding.“Defendants’ new condition is not a good faith effort to comply with the order; it is a ham-handed attempt to bully the states into making promises they have no obligation to make at the risk of losing critical disaster and other funding already appropriated by Congress,” Smith wrote. Advertisement The judge, an appointee of former Republican President George W Bush, blocked the new conditions from being enforced and required the administration to amend the grant award documents by …
