NEW YORK — A federal judge in New York on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to provide tens of millions of dollars to the MTA to protect against terrorist attacks, funding that had been denied based on the city’s sanctuary protections for undocumented immigrants.
Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a final judgment on the matter in a 28-page order that began with a solemn reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“On September 11, 2001, blocks away from this courthouse, nearly 3,000 people lost their lives in a devastating terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center. In the decades since, New York City has remained a prime target for terrorist attacks,” Kaplan wrote. “Among the City’s foremost targets are its bridges, tunnels, and subway and commuter rail systems. The subways alone have been the subject of at least eight terrorist plots since.”
State Attorney General Letitia James’ office asked the courts to require FEMA, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, to grant New York $33.8 million for anti-terrorism protections through its Transit Security Grant Program and not give it to other, less at-risk applicants, upon learning the Trump administration was going to cut the funding on Sept. 30, the eve of the new federal fiscal year.
FEMA cut the funding because New York City’s sanctuary protections for undocumented immigrants do not align with the Trump administration’s hard-line policies on immigration. The decision was not based on the likelihood of the city facing another terrorist attack, as Congress intended.
“Here, Congress did not authorize the DHS Secretary to fix immigration-related terms or conditions on the disbursement of TSGP funds. To the contrary, Congress prohibited DHS from imposing such terms by requiring the selection of grant recipients to be ‘based solely on risk,’” Kaplan wrote Thursday.
Lawyers for the federal government had argued that the money at issue had lapsed by the time the AG’s office sought the court’s intervention and had already been fully obligated to other recipients, that there was no evidence the decision-making behind withholding the funds was arbitrary and capricious, or that the cuts would cause irreparable harm.
Since the TSG program was established in the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the MTA has received millions of dollars annually to protect its transportation infrastructure from terrorist attacks, including with technologies that can detect weapons of mass destruction.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch last week called the decision a “profound mistake.” She said the money had also funded canine units trained to detect explosive, chemical or radiological threats in subway stations and tunnels, the employment of undercover officers and heavy weapons teams, and the implementation of broad surveillance systems. Gov. Kathy Hochul said the supposedly law-and-order-focused Trump administration was “defunding the police.”
Spokespeople for James’ office and DHS did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.
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