The Trump administration has ordered Cabinet agencies to review federal funding for a group of Democratic-controlled states, according to a White House budget official, as the administration looks to cut off resources for “sanctuary” jurisdictions that refuse to collaborate with immigration enforcement authorities.
The White House Office of Management and Budget ordered all federal agencies except the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments to report every grant, loan, contract, subcontract and “other monetary awards” to a group of 13 states and Washington, D.C.
“We are moving forward with taking fraud seriously,” said an OMB spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal proceedings.
President Donald Trump declared in a speech last week that as of Feb. 1, the federal government would stop making “any payments to sanctuary cities, or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens.”
The Trump administration has surged immigration enforcement in Minneapolis as prosecutors focus on nonprofits there that have received federal grants. Many of the targeted organizations are affiliated with the city’s large Somali community, and Trump has used the situation to call for a crackdown on both federal benefits fraud and immigration from East Africa.
During a speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort town of Davos, Trump described the investigation’s targets as “Somalian bandits.”
The jurisdictions included in the budget office’s request are: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state. It also includes the District of Columbia.
The memo was reported earlier by RealClearPolitics and CNN.
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