Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has scored another legal victory against President Donald Trump’s efforts to punish Chicago for its status as a sanctuary city — this one with $50 million at stake.
In a ruling handed down Friday, a federal judge granted the city’s motion for a preliminary injunction challenging the decision by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to terminate a program created to reimburse cities for costs tied to the care and feeding of migrants.
The original lawsuit was filed in May by Chicago, Denver and Arizona’s Pima County.
It argued that the February 2025 funding freeze and the Trump administration’s subsequent decision to eliminate the program on grounds that it facilitated illegal immigration and was inconsistent with the administration’s priorities violated both the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration reimbursed some of the five grants totaling $66 million that Chicago was due to receive. But $50 million was still being withheld from the city.
The preliminary injunction granted Friday prohibits the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FEMA from freezing the funding or terminating the program on the basis of a policy disagreement with Congress. The court ruled that the administration’s actions violated the separation of powers that gives Congress power to control government spending.
Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry promised to use “every legal tool available” to pursue the $50 million in funding.
“The city of Chicago will use every legal tool available to uphold the rule of law and defend the separation of powers that is the bedrock principle of our Constitutional system,” Richardson-Lowry was quoted as saying in a press release on the ruling.
“Congress created the Shelter and Services Program to reimburse cities for providing humanitarian assistance to migrants released by DHS. When DHS and FEMA unlawfully terminated that program despite Congress’ direction, we acted swiftly and the court ruled that the federal government’s actions violated the law.”
By April of this year, Chicago had already spent more than $639.6 million to provide food and shelter for more than 51,000 migrants, most of whom were sent to the city by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
The migrant crisis that Johnson inherited from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot forced the city to set up nearly 40 shelters for the thousands of migrant arrivals from Texas, as well as for the incoming migrants’ medical care, food service, school enrollment and work permits.
During the height of the city’s migrant crisis, Chicago faced difficult choices that angered some City Council members and their constituents.
Scores of asylum-seekers were forced to sleep on floors at O’Hare Airport and police stations. The Johnson administration also angered alderpersons by closing Chicago Park District field houses used for recreation and cultural events.
The mayor chose an abandoned industrial site at 38th Street and California Avenue in Brighton Park as the venue for a “winterized base camp” for thousands of migrants. That site turned out to be contaminated. Gov. JB Pritzker stepped in and blocked its use, exacerbating tensions between the city and state.
Last year, Chicago created a single, unified shelter system to house migrants and the city’s own homeless residents.
During an appearance on WVON radio this year, Johnson tried to ease lingering tensions with African American voters about the migrant crisis. A caller asked how Johnson could justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars “putting these people up when you can’t throw a brick without hitting a homeless Black person.”
Johnson said he had little choice but to deal with the crisis.
“We took an attack from the governor of Texas, responded to that attack even though it wasn’t our responsibility. It should have been the federal government. We … got those individuals off the floors of police stations and still built a system to respond to the unhoused crisis in Chicago,” Johnson said.