Judge Halts FEMA’s Funding Freeze for Sanctuary States

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred the Federal Emergency Management Agency from diverting counterterrorism and security grants away from so-called “sanctuary” states, records show.

Judge Mary McElroy of the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted a request from a coalition of states to impose the temporary restraining order on FEMA. That agency, according to a suit filed Monday, suddenly announced deep funding cuts to blue states and increases in allocations to states more friendly to the Trump administration.

The details of McElroy’s order were not immediately available.

In a statement, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he was “pleased with the court’s decision to block this chaotic and illegal attempt to coerce states into compliance with the president’s political agenda.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta also hailed the decision, saying the money is intended “to protect the safety of our communities from acts of terrorism and other disasters—meaning the stakes are quite literally life and death. This is not something to play politics with.”

The funding cut notifications came not long after a different Rhode Island federal judge imposed a permanent ban on the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to condition states’ disaster-relief funding on compliance with federal immigration priorities.

The plaintiffs in Monday’s lawsuit, a group of states that includes some of the plaintiffs in the disaster-relief suit, allege the administration cut some $233 million from their expected funds with no substantive explanation.

The case is Illinois v. Noem, D.R.I., No. 1:25-cv-00495, temporary restraining order 9/30/25.