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Connecticut Attorney General William Tong is back at it again with the lawfare.
Fresh off last year’s courtroom win that stripped immigration-enforcement conditions from over $1.3 billion in Victims of Crime Act funds, Tong has joined a coalition of 22 other left-leaning attorneys general (plus Pennsylvania and D.C.) in a new lawsuit targeting the Trump Administration’s latest effort to attach basic immigration requirements to federal public-safety grants.
The targets this time include the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants — named after a rookie NYPD officer murdered while protecting a witness — and other programs meant to support law enforcement and juvenile justice. Connecticut has received more than $6.8 million in Byrne JAG formula funds from FY 2022 to 2025.
Tong’s statement is pure political theater: “Trump is once again playing politics with public safety and trying to bully states into enforcing his reckless and unlawful immigration agenda. These conditions are an insult to survivors and victims of crime, and to our police and prosecutors.”
Civil immigration enforcement is a core federal responsibility. Asking states that accept federal crime-fighting dollars not to actively obstruct federal law is neither “reckless” nor “unlawful.” It is, in fact, the opposite of bullying. It is the federal government declining to subsidize sanctuary policies that shield illegal immigrants from removal.
The lawsuit claims the conditions violate the Administrative Procedures Act and the Spending Clause. In plain English, Tong and his coalition argue that Congress never intended for public-safety money to come with any expectation that recipients cooperate with federal immigration authorities. They want a court to permanently block the Trump Administration from attaching such conditions.
This is the same crowd that spent years defending sanctuary jurisdictions, and treating Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the real threat. Now they claim that requiring even minimal cooperation on immigration somehow insults crime victims and police officers.
Connecticut families and law enforcement officers might reasonably ask why their Attorney General is spending taxpayer resources fighting to keep federal grant money flowing without any immigration strings, rather than focusing on the actual crime and disorder that those grants are supposed to address.
AG Tong has never hidden his true priorities. Defending the state’s right to obstruct federal immigration law ranks higher than protecting U.S. citizens in Connecticut. In his own words, the state runs on illegals.
The coalition includes the usual suspects — California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, and the rest of the blue-state alliance. They succeeded once in stripping conditions from VOCA funds. They are determined to do it again for Byrne JAG and related programs.
Whether a "friendly" court will once more side with the sanctuary AGs remains to be seen. What is already clear is that Tong and his allies view any attempt to link federal public-safety dollars to immigration cooperation as an existential threat. In their world, the real outrage is not illegal immigration or the crimes committed by those here unlawfully — it is the federal government expecting states to stop obstructing enforcement.
Connecticut deserves better than an Attorney General who treats federal immigration law as optional and public-safety grants as a political football.
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