Gov. Hochul blasted Homeland Safety honcho Kristi Noem and the Trump administration Thursday for denying $34 million in safety funding to the MTA and NYPD final week over New York Metropolis’s immigration legal guidelines — as a federal decide indicated he would quickly rule on the legality of the denial.
“They are defunding the police — full stop,” Hochul informed reporters Friday, talking in entrance of a financial institution of safety digital camera feeds within the state of affairs 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 stated.
“This is a person who swore an oath — as we all did — to protect Americans, and is truly abandoning that.” the governor stated of Trump’s controversial Homeland Safety Secretary.
A presentation deck put collectively by the Federal Emergency Administration Company — a sub-agency of the Division of Homeland Safety — confirmed the MTA as the one company of the 21 that utilized for the Transit Safety Grant Program to be allotted nothing.
New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James swiftly took the Trump regime to court docket over the funding denial final week, and Manhattan Federal Decide Lewis Kaplan issued a restraining order in opposition to the feds shortly thereafter.
Gov. Kathy Hochul blasted the Trump administration on Thursday for “defunding the police” and denying $34 million in transit safety grants to New York. (Evan Simko-Bednarski / New York Each day Information)
At a listening to Thursday, Kaplan indicated he would situation a preliminary injunction or a judgment on the deserves in favor of the New York AG, pending affirmation from the Trump administration that the details of the case had been simple and didn’t must be hashed out at an evidentiary listening to. He gave the federal government till Thursday afternoon to verify, and didn’t say when he would rule or what reduction he would grant.
The AG has requested the court docket to require DHS and FEMA to award New York the total $33.8 million in funds by way of the Transit Safety Grant Program and put aside its choice to reallocate the cash to much less at-risk states. Final week, Kaplan issued a brief restraining order stopping the federal government from disbursing the funds.
In opposing the request, attorneys for the Trump administration have argued that the difficulty is moot as a result of greater than $33 million in funds needed to be obligated by the conclusion of the fiscal 12 months on Oct. 1 and had already been earmarked for different recipients.
They denied that the decision-making was “arbitrary and capricious” and that New York would undergo irreparable hurt if it didn’t obtain the funding.
The MTA, Trump administration attorneys 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 discover printed by FEMA in August that stated DHS “may take any remedy for noncompliance, including termination” of funds if states or native governments fail to adjust to 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 federal government’s Monday opposition temporary learn.
“An injunction would essentially prevent the agency from pursuing one of the Government’s policy priorities.”
The federal authorities additionally claimed that the MTA couldn’t obtain reduction as a result of it was based mostly in New York Metropolis, an assertion AG attorneys stated appeared “to be based on a misapprehension,” because the MTA is a state, not a metropolis, company.
In response to the opposition, the AG’s workplace in filings this week famous the Trump administration had not contested that, absent reduction, crucial public security applications — like these using applied sciences to detect weapons of mass destruction — wouldn’t be harmed.
The Transit Safety Grant Program, created by Congress in response to 9/11, directed that funds would go to candidates “‘solely’ on the basis of the risk of terrorist attacks.”
Kaplan, at a listening to final week, stated it appeared clear that the funds had been lower off due to the Trump administration’s dedication “that New York should be punished” for failing to fulfill the Trump administration’s needs “with respect to what it calls ‘the largest deportation program in history.’”
The MTA has routinely acquired funding by way of the Transit Safety Grant Program because the program’s inception in 2005.
In a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy earlier this 12 months, the MTA stated it had acquired $19.8 million in TSG program cash final 12 months. Of that, $10 million went to safety on the subway system, “including NYPD patrols, bag screening, expansion and training of the canine unit, and cybersecurity.” The remaining $9.8 million funded safety on the Lengthy Island Rail Street and the Metro-North Railroad, in response 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 stated. That included canine items skilled to detect explosive, chemical or radiological threats, undercover officers, “heavy weapons teams for a visible presence,” and networks of surveillance cameras all through the system.
“Since 9/11, the New York City Subway system has been a persistent target,” Tisch stated, saying the NYPD has foiled eight plots in opposition to the subway in that point.
The feds’ choice to remove funding, the commissioner stated, 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 stated.
The denied transit safety funding comes amid an onslaught of fiscal assaults on the Empire State by the Trump administration. Final week, simply hours into the continued federal shutdown over healthcare funding, Transportation Secretary Duffy introduced he was withholding $18 billion in funding for the MTA’s Second Avenue Subway enlargement in addition to the Hudson River Tunnel, a joint effort between New York and New Jersey.
That got here a day after Noem introduced she was slicing almost $187 million in counter-terror funding to New York — cuts Trump later reversed after strain from Hochul and New York elected officers from each events.
