By Lucretia Hughes
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is putting sanctuary states on notice that refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement could place billions of dollars in federal welfare funding at risk.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a new legal opinion concluding that states participating in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and certain Supplemental Security Income agreements must report people they know are unlawfully present in the United States to the Department of Homeland Security.
The requirement applies across the entire state government — not only to the agencies directly administering welfare programs.
That means information known to state departments of motor vehicles, public universities and other state agencies could become subject to the federal reporting mandate when the state accepts funding covered by the 1996 welfare law.
“Congress wrote this requirement plainly,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser said in the Justice Department announcement.
The opinion does not create a new act of Congress. Instead, it reverses a 1998 Clinton-era interpretation that limited the reporting requirement to the specific state offices administering the affected welfare programs.
Under that earlier interpretation, a state welfare agency might have been required to provide information to federal immigration authorities while another state agency possessing the same information was not.
The new opinion interprets the word “state” to include the state government as a whole.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock, who authored the opinion, said states accepting federal assistance must comply with the conditions Congress attached to that money. He warned that failure to comply could lead to serious consequences, including the loss of program funding.
The law at the center of the dispute is Section 404 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Congress passed the sweeping welfare reform measure, and President Bill Clinton signed it into law on Aug. 22, 1996.
The statute directs each state receiving federal TANF grants to provide federal immigration officials with the name, address and other identifying information of anyone the state knows is unlawfully present in the country. Reports must be made at least four times each year and when requested by federal immigration authorities.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service was later dissolved, and its immigration-enforcement responsibilities were transferred to agencies within DHS.
The full Office of Legal Counsel opinion also addresses state agreements connected to SSI and reporting requirements involving certain federal housing programs.
Contrary to some headlines circulating online, the DOJ announcement does not identify the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, as the program triggering the statewide requirement. The Justice Department specifically cited TANF and SSI.
The distinction matters. Accuracy matters, especially when the underlying policy is already significant enough without exaggerating what the government announced.
The new interpretation does not mean every state employee must investigate a person’s immigration status or report someone based on a rumor or personal suspicion. The requirement applies when the state knows that a person is not lawfully present.
However, the Justice Department also rejected the idea that states may demand a final deportation order before acknowledging that knowledge exists.
According to the opinion, a state may possess sufficient knowledge when DHS has notified it that someone lacks lawful status, when a person admits entering unlawfully without another legal basis to remain, when immigration records show that lawful status has expired or when documents submitted to the state establish the absence of lawful status.
The opinion says a state agency cannot deliberately ignore readily available information to avoid learning the truth.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories currently participate in TANF and SSI-related programs. Annual federal TANF grants exceed $16.4 billion, according to the Justice Department.
Immigrants without lawful status generally are not eligible to receive TANF or SSI benefits. The dispute, therefore, is broader than whether an illegal immigrant personally receives a welfare check. It concerns whether a state accepting federal welfare money must share immigration information found anywhere within its government.
At least 19 states and the District of Columbia allow residents without lawful immigration status to obtain driver’s licenses, according to Reuters. State universities and other public institutions may also possess information about a person’s immigration status.
Those agencies could now become central to the fight between the Trump administration and sanctuary jurisdictions that restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
The Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion is binding on federal executive agencies, but it is not the same as a ruling from the Supreme Court. Democratic-led states are expected to challenge the administration’s interpretation, potentially arguing that the federal government is misreading the statute, violating privacy protections or placing unconstitutional conditions on federal funding.
The Justice Department maintains that the funding conditions are constitutional because states voluntarily choose whether to participate in the federal programs. States objecting to the reporting requirement may withdraw from the programs, although doing so could mean surrendering billions of dollars used to assist low-income families, older Americans and people with disabilities.
The opinion applies prospectively. States will not be punished retroactively for following the narrower interpretation that had been federal policy since 1998.
For nearly three decades, government lawyers allowed sanctuary states to treat one state agency as though it had no responsibility for information possessed by another. The Trump administration is now saying that a state cannot accept federal money as one government while hiding behind bureaucratic walls when federal immigration law demands cooperation.
That is the real issue.
States cannot demand federal tax dollars while pretending federal conditions do not apply. Governors and state lawmakers remain free to oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, but political disagreement does not give them the authority to erase laws passed by Congress.
If sanctuary-state leaders believe the 1996 law is wrong, they should ask Congress to change it. They should not collect federal money, conceal known violations and then claim that cooperation is optional.
The coming court battles will determine whether the Trump administration’s broad reading survives judicial review. Until then, the DOJ has delivered a clear warning: States accepting covered federal welfare funds must follow the federal reporting requirements attached to them — or risk losing the money.
The Real News with Lucretia Hughes — bringing the receipts, defending the Constitution and telling the truth the establishment would rather ignore.
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