Editor’s note: This piece was first published by the National Immigration Law Center and is cross-posted with permission. The National Immigration Law Center is a member of the Coalition on Human Needs.

Congress is soon expected to consider the “No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities” Act. Despite its name, this bill will force cities and states to choose between facilitating mass deportations or losing otherwise unrelated health, education, transportation, domestic violence response, and other funding. NILC urges Members of Congress to vote no on this harmful legislation.

What the Bill Does

The bill would end any federal funds for “sanctuary” jurisdictions that are determined to be intended for the benefit of undocumented immigrants. The bill defines sanctuary jurisdictions as any state, city, county, or locality that has a policy prohibiting or limiting local law enforcement from taking steps to facilitate deportations. Specifically, this includes jurisdictions that limit in any way their provision of information to federal immigration enforcement about the citizenship or immigration status of someone in their custody. It also includes jurisdictions that decline to continue to hold people in jail longer than they would otherwise in response to a request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), known as a detainer.

The funds stripped by this bill are those determined to be “for the benefit” of undocumented immigrants, but the bill does not define “for the benefit” except to note that it would include “provision of food, shelter, healthcare services, legal services, and transportation.” The White House would have dangerously broad discretion in how it defines affected programs. With the Trump administration planning mass deportations and expressing a willingness to punish those that do not cooperate, states and localities that do not assist could find themselves losing significant funds.

Many of the grants and programs targeted for funding slashes under the bill benefit all members of a community, citizen or noncitizen alike. Parsing out which funds benefit different types of people would be extremely burdensome or impossible. Therefore, jurisdictions targeted by this bill would most likely face a loss of funding for all program participants. For example, a county could lose its entire free school lunch programming for all children. Similarly, transportation systems would face losing Department of Transportation funding as use of streets, buses, and trains benefit everyone in a region, not just citizens.

In a day one executive order, President Trump requested the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to investigate ending federal funding for sanctuary cities, though without this bill, they would lack clear power to do so.

It previously passed the House of Representatives in 2024.

What Programs Could Be Impacted

Because this bill is broadly drafted, federal funding for many programs could be eliminated for affected jurisdictions. Even a pared back or more targeted bill would deeply harm residents of these states, cities, counties, and towns.

While undocumented immigrants are generally ineligible for most major public benefit programs, other programs do benefit undocumented immigrants. Programs that could see their funding eliminated include:

• School lunch and breakfast programs, and other grants for schools, given school districts may not turn away students due to their immigration status.
• Domestic violence shelters, who do not turn away survivors of violence in need because of where they were born.
• Transportation projects, such as roads and transit, as excluding use of basic infrastructure by immigration status is impractical.
• Reimbursement of uncompensated care for hospitals, who must treat anyone in an emergency and should not turn away emergency room patients because of their immigration status.
• FEMA funding for natural disasters. While undocumented immigrants are ineligible for FEMA cash assistance after a disaster, like hurricanes or fires, they can receive in-kind aid like food, water, and emergency shelter.

Public health vaccination programs, nutrition assistance for new mothers, and homeless shelters could also see their funding ended among numerous other programs. The Trump administration would have wide authority to punish cities and states that do not cooperate with its mass deportations agenda to a much broader degree than its last iteration attempted to do.

Constitutional Questions on Coercive Funding

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that Congress cannot attach coercive restrictions to funding programs. For example, in NFIB vs Sebelious, the Court found the provision of the Affordable Care Act that required states to expand Medicaid eligibility in order to preserve their Medicaid funding to be unlawful because it imposed a coercive condition on states’ receipt of funding.  Because states did not anticipate such a requirement when agreeing to participate in the program, the majority found the federal government could not condition their receipt of Medicaid on such an expansion. Adding requirements that jurisdictions cooperate with ICE in order to receive funding for a given program would appear to be much more coercive than expanding Medicaid, particularly because many of the affected programs have little to do with immigration policy.

Sanctuary Cities Prioritize Community Trust

Many jurisdictions choose to limit their entanglement with federal immigration enforcement because they understand that doing so benefits public safety and is the best choice for all of their residents. Limiting entanglement with federal immigration enforcement conserves local resources and avoids a deterioration of trust in public institutions, like public schools, that results from local law enforcement working with federal immigration enforcement. Such collaboration is associated with housing instability, chronic student absenteeism, low birth weight, negative child well-being outcomes, and decreased use of preventive and prenatal care for immigrant communities and their children. Further, many jurisdictions wish to limit deportations given the negative impacts on family stability, child well-being, and trust of authorities.

This bill would deprive funding for states, localities, and their residents simply for undertaking reasonable policy measures that aim to enhance public safety and community well-being. It would coerce them into an impossible choice: do we abandon the policies thoughtfully adopted by our elected officials or do we forgo essential funding?

Congress must reject this harmful legislation.