Trump signed EO 14287, creating 'sanctuary jurisdiction' list and ordering agencies to identify federal grants for withholding

On April 28, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14287, "Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens," establishing a formal sanctuary jurisdiction designation-and-punishment mechanism across the entire federal government. The order directed the Attorney General and DHS Secretary to publish a list of states and localities that "obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws," notify each listed jurisdiction with an opportunity to "come into compliance," and instruct all federal department heads to identify grants and contracts flowing to non-compliant jurisdictions "for suspension or termination." DOJ published the resulting sanctuary list on August 5, 2025, naming 13 states, 18 cities, and four counties.

The constitutional problem the order created was immediate: Congress holds the appropriations power, and conditions on federal grants must be enacted by Congress through statute. EO 14287 asserted that the executive branch could override or supplement those conditions unilaterally to penalize local governments for not adopting administration immigration-enforcement preferences — authority courts had already ruled did not exist. A federal court blocked the funding-withholding component within 11 days of signing, finding the EO could not be used as "an end run around" a preliminary injunction already in place against Trump's earlier sanctuary-city directives. The order also directed DOJ and DHS to develop mechanisms to verify immigrant eligibility in sanctuary jurisdictions to block federal public-benefit access, and DHS Secretary Noem separately used the enforcement pretext to threaten Harvard University's SEVP certification if it failed to produce immigration compliance records by April 30, 2025.

EO 14287 escalated the administration's sanctuary-city campaign from the January 2025 EO 14159 by adding a formal government-wide designation list and a funding-withholding mandate. The designation mechanism transformed executive immigration-enforcement preferences into a coercive financial penalty against local governments, bypassing the legislative conditions Congress wrote into the relevant grant statutes and asserting an appropriations power the Constitution assigns to the legislative branch.

Updates

2026-01-13 — Trump announced Feb 1 sanctuary-funding cutoff in Detroit speech [5, 6]

During remarks at the Detroit Economic Club, President Trump announced that beginning February 1, 2026, the federal government would stop making payments to sanctuary cities and states containing them, citing no authority beyond EO 14287's existing designation-and-withholding mechanism. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he would "always defend New Yorkers, even in the face of federal threats to withhold funding." A spokesperson for New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state would "not support [Trump's] aggressive attacks on hardworking families" and would "see them in court" if the funding was actually withheld.

2026-07-09 — Judge enjoined four agencies from anti-DEI and immigration grant conditions [3, 4]

On July 9, 2026, U.S. District Judge William Orrick issued a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Justice from imposing or enforcing anti-DEI and immigration-enforcement conditions on federal public-safety, disaster-preparedness, and victim-services grants sought by a coalition of California and Oregon cities and counties. The court held that "[n]othing in the Constitution or federal statutes authorizes Defendants to impose the Challenged Conditions," finding the requirements likely exceeded executive authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs included Fresno, Santa Clara, Redwood City, Santa Cruz, Stockton, and the counties of San Diego, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, along with Beaverton, Corvallis, and Hillsboro, Oregon. The ruling extended the earlier judicial checks on the administration's grant-conditioning campaign beyond the sanctuary-immigration conditions of EO 14287 to the administration's broader anti-DEI grant terms.