Feds abandon bid to tie transportation money to immigration

Just one week after taking its fight to the next level, the federal government is throwing in the towel on its attempt to tie transportation funding to immigration enforcement.

Cutting off the federal funding spigot to states that do not comply with federal policies has been a favorite tactic of the current White House administration. Recently, the U.S. Department of Transportation has pulled $160 million from California for failing to address non-domiciled CDL issues. Several other states, including North Carolina and Colorado, have received similar threats.

In those cases, the feds pulled funding over issues directly related to transportation. Last April, the DOT attempted to pull funding from states that did not comply with policies seemingly unrelated to transportation: immigration.

That prompted 20 state attorneys general to file a lawsuit against the DOT. The lawsuit claims that tying transportation funding to immigration enforcement violates the statutes that authorize the funding and constitutes an executive branch takeover of the power of the purse that is assigned to Congress.

In a letter to state DOTs, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated that some states have issued driver’s licenses to people violating immigration law. Duffy reasoned that this is enough reason to withhold federal funding for not complying with other immigration policies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. A federal judge was not convinced.

Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of the Rhode Island district court ruled in favor of the states last June. McConnell found that Congress did not authorize the DOT to step into the immigration enforcement ring.

“Defendants’ conduct violates (federal law) because they acted outside of their statutory authority when they issued the Duffy Directive and imposed the (immigration enforcement condition) categorically across all U.S. DOT grants when Congress appropriated those funds for transportation purposes, not immigration enforcement purposes,” McConnell stated in the order. “Congress did not authorize or grant authority to the secretary of transportation to impose immigration enforcement conditions on federal dollars specifically appropriated for transportation purposes.”

The federal government appeared unwilling to take no for an answer. On January 5, the DOT filed an appeal in the First Circuit. However, that willingness to keep the fight going was short-lived.

On Jan. 13, the DOT filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the appeal. The motion does not mention why the federal government is dropping its case.

Since the states filed the lawsuit last summer, the DOT has found other ways to tie transportation funding more directly to immigration: English proficiency and non-domiciled CDL enforcement.

Last May, the DOT announced it would begin enforcing English-proficiency regulations that would take noncompliant drivers off the road. A few months later, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued an interim final rule tightening restrictions on non-domiciled CDLs.

Those two actions alone have allowed the DOT to threaten federal funding over immigration-related issues. In August, Duffy said he would pull funding from any state that does not comply with English-proficiency regulations. That led to $33 million being withheld from California, which the state has taken to court. That case is pending.

Shortly after the states sued over immigration enforcement ties, the DOT said it would conduct a nationwide audit of states issuing non-domiciled CDLs. That led to an interim final rule heavily restricting those CDLs. Since then, the DOT has pulled funding or threatened to pull funding from states that do not comply with the new rule. LL