Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is among 21 attorneys general who have joined a lawsuit to stop President Donald Trump from withholding billions of dollars in funding for resources for crime victims from states that don’t aid the administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Nevada received about $24 million in funding from the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA, in 2024, according to the Victim Assistance Data Dashboard. Withholding funds would put the state, and the 58 organizations that receive grant funding, at risk of losing money needed to offer support services to victims, according to Nevada Current.
The U.S. Department of Justice threatened to block VOCA funding nationwide, which provides critical grant funding for state agencies and nonprofits addressing domestic violence and sexual assault, if states don’t cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Survivors of crime “should not be used as pawns to score political points” in Trump’s efforts to force states to comply with aggressive immigration enforcement,” Ford said in a statement earlier this week.
“It is despicable that President Trump is using vital funding to play political games,” Ford said. “He is putting victims and survivors of crime in even more precarious situations when what they deserve is help with regaining a sense of normalcy.”
The act was created in 1984 and has allowed helped fund a variety of services and assistance, including paying for emergency shelter, medical expenses, crime scene cleanup, and sexual assault forensic exams.
“Between 2021 and 2024, states have used federal VOCA funds to assist, on average, more than 8.5 million crime victims per year and to pay more than 200,000 claims per year for losses suffered by crime victims,” the lawsuit reads.