Attorney General Pam Bondi is among the defendants in a new lawsuit over the agency’s grant requirements for nonprofits serving crime survivors.Will Oliver/Pool/CNP/ZUMA
More than 20 state attorneys general have filed suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), alleging the Trump administration is unlawfully seeking to withhold critical funds for crime victims from states and nonprofits deemed noncompliant with its draconian immigration enforcement efforts.
The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Rhode Island on Monday, centers on three notices that DOJ posted last month for funding allocated by a decades-old law called the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). As I previously reported for Mother Jones, those funds have long been a critical source of support for organizations including domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child advocacy centers, which use the money to run emergency shelters and hotlines and provide therapy services, legal advocacy, and court accompaniment to abused people, particularly women and children. Another bucket of VOCA funding also goes directly to crime victims, who can use the funds for pay for services including mental health counseling, funeral expenses, and clean-ups of crime scenes.
“Playing politics with the lives of people who have suffered so greatly is reckless, it is cruel, and in this case—it is illegal.”
But under the Trump administration, this year’s round of $1.9 billion in funding comes with strings attached: It stipulates that grantees may not use the funds for any program or activity that, in DOJ’s opinion, “violates (or promotes or facilitates the violation of) federal immigration law…or impedes or hinders” enforcement.
While the funding announcements do not clarify what, exactly, would constitute such violations, the intent seems clear: Trump’s DOJ wants to essentially force states and the programs they fund to grant the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), unfettered access to the victims they serve—conditions that the lawsuit calls “unprecedented.”
“Playing politics with the lives of people who have suffered so greatly is reckless, it is cruel, and in this case—it is illegal,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, the lead plaintiff, in a statement.
Advocates for crime victims say that, if enacted, these conditions could have a chilling effect on immigrant survivors of violence, who may avoid seeking help for fear of being deported. “One huge barrier for victims to leave an abusive situation is fear of their abusers reporting them to immigration, which is a real threat, even when the survivor has a path to lawful status,” Carmen McDonald, executive director of Survivor Justice Center, a Los Angeles organization that supports immigrant survivors of domestic violence, told me. “This will continue to cause victims to be unsafe at home and have devastating impacts for survivors.”
As I reported in June, McDonald and other domestic violence service providers in LA saw these impacts firsthand when ICE increased its presence in the city earlier this summer. Several providers told me that survivors were afraid to show up to court appointments and seek in-person help at shelters because they worried that it could put them at risk of deportation or detention from ICE.
These fears were worsened by the fact that Trump administration also rescinded Biden administration guidance characterizing domestic violence shelters and victim services centers, among others, as “protected spaces” where immigration enforcement should not take place due to the harm it could inflict on a community. It seems unsurprising, then, that a survey of more than 170 advocates and attorneys, conducted earlier this year by the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors, found that nearly 80 percent of advocates reported an increase in immigration-related questions from immigrant survivors since Trump’s election last year.
Now, the administration is trying to use another yet tool in its arsenal—billions in federal funding—to strong-arm nonprofits reliant on VOCA funds into cooperating with Trump’s mass deportation agenda. As I reported last year, VOCA funds come mostly from financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases; the DOJ distributes a portion of the funds to states, while another portion of the funds are earmarked for direct compensation to eligible victims.
In the last fiscal year, the funds served more than 7 million victims, most of whom were women and victims of domestic violence, assault, and child sex abuse, according to DOJ data. That data does not specify how much of the funding went to immigration-related programs, but shows that it served millions through individual advocacy, legal advice, and referrals to other programs—all services that could theoretically include support for immigrants.
But the available VOCA funds have been declining as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government. That has already left organizations relying on VOCA funds stretched thin, with programs serving LGBTQ and immigrant survivors particularly difficult to fundraise for due to the hot-button politics around the clients they serve, sources previously told me.
If Trump’s DOJ prevails in court, that landscape is poised to get even worse. Krista Colon, executive director of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, said service providers “should not have to interrupt these services because of fears of running afoul of new, unrelated grant terms and conditions, just as they should not have to fear catastrophic cuts.”
The lawsuit alleges that the conditions seeking to mandate immigration enforcement are unlawful under various provisions of both the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which governs how agencies operate; the complaint states, for example, that the DOJ does not have the authority to mandate compliance with federal enforcement due to the Constitution’s separation of powers, and that the requirements are “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the APA. It names as defendants Attorney General Pam Bondi and two of her subordinates, as well as the offices all three represent. A spokesperson for the Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
This is one of many times the Trump administration has threatened harm to survivors of crimes: The DOJ previously cancelled more than $800 million in grants for crime victims’ services, before restoring some following public outcry and reporting from Mother Jones. The latest lawsuit also follows another, similar suit, filed in June by 17 state domestic violence and sexual assault coalitions, which targeted anti-DEI conditions that Trump’s DOJ imposed on funding allocated by the Violence Against Women Act; earlier this month, a federal judge issued a preliminary stay, temporarily blocking the administration’s requirements on those grants.
Advocates are hoping plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit will find similar success. As Colon, executive director of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, put it: “Domestic violence does not discriminate.”