What are the major federal court rulings about municipal noncooperation with ICE in the last five years?
Executive summary
Federal courts in the last five years have produced a patchwork of decisions that both constrain and affirm federal immigration enforcement powers vis-à-vis cities and states: a federal judge blocked the Transportation Department from conditioning funds on local cooperation with ICE (allowing that order to stand after the agency dropped its appeal) [1], state and state-high-court rulings like Massachusetts’ Commonwealth v. Lunn have curbed local enforcement of ICE “detainers” [2], and other federal orders have imposed operational limits on ICE conduct around protests and inspections even while some courts have allowed the federal government to restrict congressional oversight of detention facilities [3] [4] [5].
1. McConnell’s check on federal funding coercion — USDOT barred from withholding funds
A U.S. district judge, John McConnell, concluded that the Transportation Department exceeded its statutory authority and violated constitutional limits by conditioning federal transport funding on cooperation with immigration enforcement, and when the agency dropped its appeal the court’s order barring USDOT from withholding funds for noncooperation was left intact [1], a decision reporters framed as a significant rebuke to executive attempts to leverage grants to compel local compliance.
2. Commonwealth v. Lunn — state high court limits on ICE detainers
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling in Commonwealth v. Lunn — celebrated by civil‑liberties groups as a landmark — held that state and local law enforcement cannot legally hold people solely on the basis of ICE detainers, effectively limiting one of the principal mechanisms by which municipalities had cooperated with federal immigration agents [2]; although this is a state-court holding, it has national significance because it shapes how local actors respond to federal requests and invites similar litigation elsewhere.
3. Courts protecting protestors and observers from federal retaliation
Federal judges have issued injunctions limiting ICE and other federal agents’ ability to arrest, pepper‑spray, detain, or retaliate against peaceful demonstrators and those monitoring enforcement actions, most prominently in Minnesota where Judge Katherine Menendez barred such tactics in response to litigation by people detained or threatened by ICE [3] [4] [6]; those rulings functionally constrain ICE conduct in specific jurisdictions and establish remedial frameworks plaintiffs can invoke in future challenges.
4. Restriction on congressional access to detention facilities — judicial deference to the administration
In a contrasting decision, a federal judge permitted the Trump administration to continue restricting unannounced congressional inspections of ICE detention facilities, a ruling that underscores the uneven character of the judiciary’s interventions—protecting certain federal operational prerogatives even as courts limit other enforcement tactics [5].
5. The unresolved national question and the Tenth Amendment backdrop
The broader constitutional issue — whether the federal government can coerce state and local cooperation through funding conditions — remains unsettled at the Supreme Court level because earlier high‑profile petitions were dismissed and the Court has not definitively resolved the scope of permissible federal leverage under the Tenth Amendment and related statutes; commentators and legal forums note that while some federal judges have pushed back against coercive conditions, nationwide clarity is lacking [7].
6. Practical effect: a fractured, jurisdictional landscape and the litigation frontlines
The combined effect of these rulings is a fractured legal map: some federal courts bar particular ICE tactics or funding conditions in discrete contexts [1] [3] [4], state high courts can eliminate local cooperation mechanisms like detainers [2], and other courts will defer to executive claims of operational necessity [5], meaning municipal noncooperation remains a live, contested policy choice that is being litigated piecemeal rather than resolved in a single, controlling precedent [7].