Trump Raises New Threat to Sanctuary Cities: Blocking Transportation Dollars

The new U.S.Department of Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, issued an order this week that threatened to shift federal transportation funding away from local governments that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.The order revives an unsettled legal fight from the first Trump term over whether the federal government can withhold funds from “sanctuary cities.” In early 2017, President Trump tried to block millions of dollars in law enforcement grants to Democratic-led cities and states that had policies declining to aid federal agents in identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants.

Lawsuits against the effort never fully resolved by the end of his term.The money at stake now is potentially far larger than the law enforcement grants: The Department of Transportation sends billions of dollars annually to states and local governments to fund highways, transit systems, airports, bridges, commuter rail and ports, as well as road safety projects.“This is on a much, much larger scale,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown.Legal scholars said that past rulings suggest the greater scale of money at play might make courts even less likely to go along.The full intent of the transportation memo was unclear, but the practical effect of withholding even some money would probably be to harm transit systems in big cities, given that the largest transit networks in the country tend to be in places that also have sanctuary policies.But were the federal government to try to block funding to entire states with sanctuary policies, like California, it could also affect the roads, highways and transit used by millions of rural Americans.The transportation department declined to clarify if it intends to block funds to sanctuary cities and states, referring questions about the order back to the text itself.

That document — described as covering all grants, loans and contracts — said the agency should “prioritize” projects under a ra...