The U.S. Justice Department has warned states they could lose billions of dollars in welfare funding if they fail to report immigrants known to state agencies who are in the country illegally.
The warning, issued on Wednesday by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, marks a significant expansion of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts.
Under the new interpretation, states receiving funding for two major welfare programmes must report people unlawfully present in the U.S. to the Department of Homeland Security.
Previously, the requirement applied only to agencies directly administering the programmes. The new guidance could extend it to other state agencies that may have information about immigrants, including universities and departments of motor vehicles.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Joshua Craddock said failure to comply could result in the loss of federal funding.
The programmes include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income. Federal TANF grants exceed $16.5 billion a year, while federal SSI benefits total more than $60 billion.
Immigrants without legal status are not eligible for either programme.
The opinion is not law but is binding on federal agencies. It could face legal challenges from Democratic-led states, several of which have already challenged the administration's efforts to expand access to personal information held by state agencies.
At least 19 states and Washington, D.C., allow immigrants without lawful status to obtain driver's licences, while some state universities also admit such students, potentially giving state agencies access to information about millions of people without legal immigration status.
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European leaders gathered in Dublin on Thursday, 12 November, for the ninth European Political Community (EPC) summit, with security, defence and energy high on the agenda. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held talks focused on peace, trade and regional cooperation.
Iran will not let a single particle of its enriched nuclear material leave the country, and any new U.S. attack would be met with strikes on distant American bases, Iranian security chief Mohsen Rezaei has said.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is stepping down amid reports linking him to a woman suspected by U.S. authorities of spying for China, throwing the future of the $4 trillion chipmaker into uncertainty.
Kazakhstan’s security service has arrested Nurlan Zhakupov, CEO of Samruk-Kazyna, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, on suspicion of corruption. Yelzhas Otynshiyev, Chairman of KTZ, Kazakhstan’s national railway firm has also been detained.
Eight people have been killed and at least 17 injured after an apartment building collapsed into a neighbouring construction site in Brooklyn, New York, as rescuers continued searching the rubble for possible survivors.
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Here's your AnewZ Technology Daily Brief for the 13th of November. This week, a Microsoft outage hit Australian agencies, Google restricted mapping data in South Korea, a lawsuit targeted advanced AI development, and Nvidia faced a leadership crisis after Jensen Huang's resignation.
Microsoft struggled to restore its services on Friday after a major outage disrupted Outlook, Teams and Copilot across the United States and Asia-Pacific region.
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