A federal judge in Rhode Island has permanently blocked the Trump administration from attaching immigration-cooperation conditions to congressionally authorised public-safety grants for the states that sued over them, in a ruling announced on Wednesday, November 4, by New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, whose office co-led the case. Chief U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, declared the administration's actions unlawful and permanently enjoined the U.S. Department of Justice from implementing or enforcing the conditions — conditions that would have required states to cooperate with federal civil immigration enforcement in exchange for money Congress created for police, prosecutors and community safety programmes.
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
“Today's victory in court makes clear that the federal government cannot unlawfully politicize law enforcement and public safety by threatening our access to critical funding that helps us help pay for protective equipment for law enforcement, fight drug trafficking, enforce Megan's Law, and find violent criminals,” Davenport said in Trenton. “We are grateful that the court saw through the Administration's latest attempt to attach illegal conditions to this critical law enforcement funding,” she added. “Make no mistake: We will continue to fight the Administration's brazenly unlawful actions that put politics over public safety.”
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
The injunction is permanent, not a temporary pause: the Justice Department cannot implement or enforce the challenged conditions against the plaintiff states unless a higher court overturns the ruling. Its reach is the states that sued — it is not a blanket nationwide prohibition on every immigration-related grant rule. And as the Jersey Vindicator's reporting notes, the decision protects access to the grants without the conditions; it does not by itself establish that New Jersey had already lost the money, or that new money has now been paid out.
What the conditions would have required
According to the Jersey Vindicator's account of the case, the administration sought cooperation with federal immigration authorities that included access to people held in state custody, advance notice of certain releases, and compliance with immigration-information requirements. The states argued that those conditions forced them into a choice between public-safety funding and their own policies on assisting federal civil immigration enforcement — and that Congress had never authorised the Justice Department to impose the conditions in the first place. Judge McConnell agreed with the states on the authority question, ruling that the department exceeded its authority by attaching the requirements to funding Congress created for state and local criminal-justice programmes.
Source: The Jersey Vindicator, via JBizNews (Nov. 4, 2026)
The money at the centre of the case: the Byrne JAG programme
The best-known programme in the case is the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program — Byrne JAG. The Attorney General's office notes that for decades, regardless of which party held power, Byrne JAG has been the leading federal source of criminal-justice funding to state and local governments, supporting police departments, prosecutors, crime prevention and other criminal-justice work. In New Jersey the grants pay for exactly the items Davenport listed — protective equipment for officers, drug-trafficking investigations, Megan's Law enforcement and work to locate violent criminals. The lawsuit also covered newer Justice Department grants, including funds dedicated to law enforcement, crisis intervention and juvenile justice.
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
How the fight grew: victims' funding first, then police grants
This ruling is the second round of the same fight. Last year, the administration declared that states would be unable to access Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funds unless they agreed to its immigration demands; the multistate coalition sued and succeeded in getting the federal government to remove those conditions from more than $1.3 billion of VOCA funds. This year, according to the Attorney General, the Justice Department applied similar conditions to new grants — including law-enforcement and juvenile-justice money — and the coalition expanded its challenge in an amended lawsuit filed in the District of Rhode Island, the case Judge McConnell has now decided.
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
The legal reasoning: Congress, the Spending Clause and federalism
The coalition's argument, which the court accepted, was built on who holds the power of the purse. The Attorney General's office says the administration's actions violated laws passed by Congress as well as the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and conflicted with core principles of American governance — the separation of powers and federalism. Its statement puts the states' position plainly: “Civil immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and not a state government responsibility,” and the attempt to coerce states into doing the federal government's bidding was therefore unlawful. The New Jersey legal team on the case included Deputy Attorneys General Bassam F. Gergi, Nathaniel F. Rubin, Phoenix N. Meyers, Sarah Nealon, Surinder K. Aggarwal and Anaiis Gonzalez, supervised by Assistant Attorney General Mayur P. Saxena, Deputy Solicitor General Shankar Duraiswamy and Solicitor General Sundeep Iyer.
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
Who stood on each side
New Jersey co-led the coalition with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha. They were joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, together with the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — a coalition the Attorney General counts as 23 states. On the other side stood the U.S. Department of Justice, defending conditions its leadership had attached to the grant programmes.
Source: New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (Nov. 4, 2026)
What it means for New Jersey's Punjabi and immigrant communities
New Jersey is one of the largest Punjabi-diaspora states in the country — Edison, Iselin, Jersey City, Paterson, Carteret and South Brunswick are home to tens of thousands of Punjabi and wider South Asian families — and it is a state whose own policies limit how far local police assist federal civil immigration enforcement. For those communities, this ruling settles a practical question that sat underneath the legal one: the federal government cannot use police-safety money — the grants that fund the local departments serving diaspora neighbourhoods — as leverage to override the state's own choices about immigration cooperation. Police funding for the plaintiff states now flows on the terms Congress set, not on immigration conditions added afterwards.
What happens next
For police departments, prosecutors and public-safety programmes in New Jersey and the other plaintiff states, the immediate effect is certainty: the affected grant programmes proceed without the challenged conditions, and the permanent injunction stays in place unless an appeals court overturns it. The points to watch are whether the Justice Department appeals Judge McConnell's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and whether the administration attempts similar conditions on other federal grant programmes — the pattern that turned last year's VOCA dispute into this year's broader case.