Gov. Hochul blasted Homeland Security honcho Kristi Noem and the Trump administration Thursday for denying $34 million in security funding to the MTA and NYPD last week over New York City’s immigration laws — as a federal judge indicated he would soon rule on the legality of the denial.
“They are defunding the police — full stop,” Hochul told reporters Friday, speaking in front of a bank of security camera feeds in the situation room of MTA’s Manhattan headquarters. “In a stark moment of hypocrisy, the federal government is literally threatening our ability to keep [transit] operations safe,” Hochul said.
“This is a person who swore an oath — as we all did — to protect Americans, and is truly abandoning that.” the governor said of Trump’s controversial Homeland Security Secretary.
A presentation deck put together by the Federal Emergency Management Agency — a sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security — showed the MTA as the only agency of the 21 that applied for the Transit Security Grant Program to be allocated nothing.
“Of the 21 agencies that applied, one was not selected because it is based in a Sanctuary Jurisdiction city,” read a copy of the presentation obtained by the Daily News.
New York Attorney General Letitia James swiftly took the Trump regime to court over the funding denial last week, and Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a restraining order against the feds shortly thereafter.
At a hearing Thursday, Kaplan indicated he would issue a preliminary injunction or a judgment on the merits in favor of the New York AG, pending confirmation from the Trump administration that the facts of the case were straightforward and did not need to be hashed out at an evidentiary hearing. He gave the government until Thursday afternoon to confirm, and didn’t say when he would rule or what relief he would grant.
The AG has asked the court to require DHS and FEMA to award New York the full $33.8 million in funds through the Transit Security Grant Program and set aside its decision to reallocate the money to less at-risk states. Last week, Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order preventing the government from disbursing the funds.
In opposing the request, lawyers for the Trump administration have argued that the issue is moot because more than $33 million in funds had to be obligated by the conclusion of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 and had already been earmarked for other recipients.
They denied that the decision-making was “arbitrary and capricious” and that New York would suffer irreparable harm if it did not receive the funding.
The MTA, Trump administration lawyers wrote Monday, “did not receive funding because it is located in New York City, which is designated as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction City.”
They cited a notice published by FEMA in August that said DHS “may take any remedy for noncompliance, including termination” of funds if states or local governments fail to comply with the Trump administration’s hardline immigration agenda.
“Ensuring … that recipients enforce federal immigration laws and policies is a rational reason in support of the agency’s denial of federal funds,” the government’s Monday opposition brief read.
“An injunction would essentially prevent the agency from pursuing one of the Government’s policy priorities.”
The federal government also claimed that the MTA could not receive relief because it was based in New York City, an assertion AG lawyers said appeared “to be based on a misapprehension,” as the MTA is a state, not a city, agency.
In response to the opposition, the AG’s office in filings this week noted the Trump administration had not contested that, absent relief, critical public safety programs — like those employing technologies to detect weapons of mass destruction — would not be harmed.
The Transit Security Grant Program, created by Congress in response to 9/11, directed that funds would go to applicants “‘solely’ on the basis of the risk of terrorist attacks.”
Kaplan, at a hearing last week, said it appeared clear that the funds were cut off because of the Trump administration’s determination “that New York should be punished” for failing to satisfy the Trump administration’s wishes “with respect to what it calls ‘the largest deportation program in history.’”
The MTA has routinely received funding through the Transit Security Grant Program since the program’s inception in 2005.
In a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy earlier this year, the MTA said it had received $19.8 million in TSG program money last year. Of that, $10 million went to security on the subway system, “including NYPD patrols, bag screening, expansion and training of the canine unit, and cybersecurity.” The remaining $9.8 million funded security on the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad, according to the letter.
NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch expanded on that Thursday.
“Over the past 18 years we have consistently used these funds from this grant to support deployments of counterterrorism officers into New York City Subway stations, tunnels, equipment rooms, tracks and train cars,” she said. That included canine units trained to detect explosive, chemical or radiological threats, undercover officers, “heavy weapons teams for a visible presence,” and networks of surveillance cameras throughout the system.
“Since 9/11, the New York City Subway system has been a persistent target,” Tisch said, saying the NYPD has foiled eight plots against the subway in that time.
The feds’ decision to take away funding, the commissioner said, is a “profound mistake.”
“These program funds are the difference between preventing the next attack in our transit system, and a transit system left exposed to it,” Tisch said.
The denied transit security funding comes amid an onslaught of fiscal attacks on the Empire State by the Trump administration. Last week, just hours into the ongoing federal shutdown over healthcare funding, Transportation Secretary Duffy announced he was withholding $18 billion in funding for the MTA’s Second Avenue Subway expansion as well as the Hudson River Tunnel, a joint effort between New York and New Jersey.
That came a day after Noem announced she was cutting nearly $187 million in counter-terror funding to New York — cuts Trump later reversed after pressure from Hochul and New York elected officials from both parties.
