Sanctuary Cities 2017: How Much Money Do They Receive From The Federal Government?

Following through on campaign promises to eradicate the nation’s undocumented immigrant population, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders Wednesday, one of which scaled back funding for municipal governments that defy federal orders to imprison and deport non-U.S. citizens in the country illegally — also known as “sanctuary cities.”

The Immigration Legal Resource Center, which tracks immigration policy across jurisdictions, defined 39 urban areas, as well as 364 counties and four states, as sanctuaries as of September. Many of those 39 cities lean on federal dollars for funding, and would risk losses of, in some cases, billions of dollars as a result of Trump’s executive order.

New York, whose attorney general already has challenged the legality of Trump’s actions, stands to lose $10.4 billion, the City Council Speaker’s office told CNN.

Washington, another sanctuary city, spent $2.8 billion in federal funding during fiscal year 2015 — nearly a third of its total expenditures that year, a report from the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute said.

Los Angeles received more than $200 million in federal grants for its fiscal year 2015 budget, and even more federal grant money from the state that originated at the federal level, a report from Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office said, while San Francisco’s city Controller Ben Rosenfield told the San Francisco Chronicle the city gets around $1 billion of its budget from federal sources.

Nearly a quarter of Seattle’s $4 billion budget came from federal government, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found. Chicago, where Trump threatened Tuesday to implement martial law, had an expected federal grant funding total of $1.48 billion for 2016, up from $1.32 billion the previous year, the city’s 2016 budget overview showed.

Further east, Boston received $151 million in federal grant money for fiscal year 2016, along with additional state grants, much of which included federal funding, a city tax report said.