Republican Sen. Rick Scott (R) introduced two bills Wednesday that would strip federal funding from sanctuary cities and states that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, targeting jurisdictions that have blocked federal agents from deporting criminal illegal immigrants.
The first measure, the Unifying American Security Interests Act, ties eligibility for federal grants to ICE cooperation. To keep receiving federal dollars, jurisdictions would need to honor ICE detainers, participate in joint training with immigration officers, and share information with federal authorities. The bill aims to “strengthen homeland security by expanding Urban Areas Security Initiative grant eligibility criteria to promote cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to advance election security protection.”
The second bill, the Sanctuary Jurisdiction Event Security Enhancement Act, bars non-cooperating cities and states from receiving DHS funds used for major event security. According to its text, the legislation establishes “eligibility requirements for the use of Federal funds for Special Event Assessment Rating support in sanctuary jurisdictions and to reallocate such funds to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for immigration enforcement efforts.”
“Democrat politicians are putting illegal aliens first and the American people last, harboring criminals in sanctuary cities where they refuse to enforce our laws,” Scott said in a statement. “President Trump is doing his part by securing the border, now Congress must pass my bills to hold sanctuary cities and states accountable by withholding federal tax dollars until they cooperate with federal law enforcement.”
Last year, a federal judge ruled that President Trump’s executive order withholding funds from sanctuary cities is unconstitutional. “The challenged sections in the 2025 Executive Orders and the Bondi Directive that order executive agencies to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funding apportioned to localities by Congress, violate the Constitution’s separation of powers principles and the Spending Clause, as explained by the Ninth Circuit in the earlier iteration of this case in 2018; they also violate the Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process,” the ruling said, noting that Trump’s orders also “violate the Tenth Amendment because they impose coercive condition intended to commandeer local officials into enforcing federal immigration practices and law.”
