The Expanding Pressure Campaign Against Sanctuary Cities

In April, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin proposed something no cabinet official had threatened before: halting Customs and Border Protection processing at international airports in cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

If cities are going to sit there and say that they’re not going to enforce immigration policies, then I’ll repeat myself and say it doesn’t make any sense for us to process international travelers through that city. — Markwayne Mullin

The idea escalated from a floating trial balloon to a drafted plan within weeks. Mullin confirmed he had met with White House officials about it. By May, the threat was specific enough that industry groups warned of $8 billion in annual tourism losses, with the FIFA World Cup weeks away ^[1]. Then Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pushed back.

We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics. — Sean Duffy

Duffy's objection did not kill the idea — no final decision has been made — but it revealed something about how the administration's pressure campaign actually works. The airport customs threat was the newest, most extreme lever yet. It drew opposition from inside the cabinet. And it surfaced just as courts were shutting down the previous ones. The financial-pressure track is the most developed. In March, the Office of Management and Budget directed a freeze on trillions in federal loans and grants to states; the First Circuit unanimously ruled it "arbitrary and capricious" and an usurpation of the balance of power ^[2]. In June, the USDA attempted to condition $74 billion in annual nutrition funding — SNAP, school lunches, WIC — on state compliance with administration immigration, gender, and athletic policies.

As the Trump Administration tries to use essential programs and billions in funding as leverage to advance their hateful, discriminatory agenda, California continues to fight to uphold the law and ensure that our communities can continue to access the funding they need to thrive. — Rob Bonta

A federal judge blocked the conditions ^[3]. The Department of Transportation cut $73.5 million in highway funding from New York, with Secretary Duffy explicitly tying the cut to the state's policy of issuing commercial driver's licenses to immigrants and threatening $147 million more in future annual reductions ^[4].

I promised the American people I would hold any state leader accountable for failing to keep them safe from unvetted, unqualified foreign drivers. I’m delivering on that promise today. — Sean Duffy

Then there are the cases where the immigration nexus is less explicit. In June, HUD suspended nearly $200 million in funding to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, citing fraud and mismanagement. LAHSA called it "a blatant attempt to pull yet more resources from Los Angeles, a city they have targeted time and again" ^[5]. The same month, HHS suspended federal funding for New York's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, with the inspector general citing poor performance; Attorney General Letitia James, whose office had previously been recognized by the same administration, called it "an unprecedented attack" ^[6]. In both cases, the stated justifications are non-immigration enforcement rationales. In both cases, the targets are sanctuary jurisdictions led by prominent Democratic officials. Whether these are mixed-motive actions or something narrower is impossible to establish from the outside — but they land inside a pattern that makes local officials disinclined to give the benefit of the doubt. The legal track has been less effective. The Justice Department has filed Supremacy Clause lawsuits against at least 21 jurisdictions, with officials framing the effort in explicitly partisan terms.

this department will never stand for such lawless action from blue state leaders. — United States Department of Justice

But the lawsuits are collapsing. A federal judge dismissed the case against Colorado, citing the 1997 Printz precedent that the federal government cannot compel state officers to implement federal programs ^[7]. A judge in New Jersey found a "fundamental flaw" because local policies merely mirrored a statewide directive ^[8]. The suits against Illinois, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston were dismissed as well — the LA judge ruling that the city's ordinance "controls the actions of the City's own agents" rather than obstructing federal enforcement ^[9]. The legal track is failing, which is precisely why the other tracks keep expanding. The enforcement-surge track is the bluntest instrument. Border Czar Tom Homan made the tradeoff explicit in February.

It’s safer for everyone involved if sanctuary cities hold illegal aliens on detainers so ICE doesn’t have to send six or seven people to go hunt those criminals down. — Tom Homan

The logic was simple: cities that hold detainees for ICE get quieter, more targeted enforcement. Cities that refuse get what Homan called a "flood the zone" operation ^[10]. Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota was the demonstration. It produced over 4,000 arrests and then ended, but Minneapolis and St. Paul reported at least $203.1 million in fiscal damage — $81 million in small business revenue losses, $47 million in lost wages, $15.7 million in rental assistance, more than $6 million in a single month of police overtime — with officials calling the totals an undercount ^[11]. The surge also strained the federal justice system itself: court dockets clogged with habeas petitions, the U.S. Attorney's Office canceled all civil enforcement work, a dozen-plus lawyers resigned ^[12]. What this is not is a single coordinated playbook. Some vectors carry non-immigration justifications that make them genuinely mixed-motive. One — the airport customs threat — drew opposition from inside the cabinet. The legislative track, a bill to federally mandate sanctuary jurisdiction cooperation with ICE, has not passed ^[13]. And the courts have checked every vector as it appeared. What it is, instead, is an adaptive logic: every federal lever — funding, infrastructure, services, enforcement — becomes a bargaining chip for immigration compliance. When a court blocks one, another surfaces. The effect is the same whether or not anyone planned it: new levers surface faster than courts can close off the old ones. The pattern's yield is not a converted New York or California. Those states have the resources to litigate, and they win. The yield is Helena, Montana. In March, Helena rescinded its sanctuary-city resolution after the state attorney general threatened $10,000 fines every five days and the loss of state grants. The mayor called the fight "rigged" and "infuriating" but said the financial risk was too high ^[14].

In Montana, we banned sanctuary cities to keep our cities safe. — Greg Gianforte

That is the pattern's actual yield: not a flipped Los Angeles or Chicago, but a signal to every small jurisdiction watching. Large sanctuary cities resist through the courts and win. Small ones fold. The asymmetry is not a bug. It is what the whole apparatus produces — a two-tier system of municipal sovereignty in which the cost of resistance is priced by the depth of a city's legal budget.