By Bianca Flowers
(Reuters) -Chicago will not apply for federal community violence intervention grants after the Trump administration reshaped the program to focus on law enforcement and immigration, the city said this week, calling the new stipulations an effort to politicize public safety.
“The city of Chicago does not intend to apply for any federal grants that require the city to comply with President Trump’s political aims,” Mayor Brandon Johnson’s press office said in a statement first shared with Reuters.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed it has shifted the focus of the grant, which was originally intended to support community violence-prevention efforts.
Chicago officials and the Trump administration hold conflicting notions about what constitutes effective violence prevention. Johnson characterized the administration’s decision to rescind more than $800 million in violence prevention grants in April as “politically motivated.”
The move to shun the new grants marks the latest flashpoint between the city and the administration over its aggressive immigration crackdown. Chicago previously sued the Trump administration over conditions it called “illegal restrictions” on other community policing grants.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday about Chicago’s decision to avoid seeking the grant funding.
Chicago is the only U.S. city so far to say publicly that it will not apply for the funding, even as cities such as Newark, New Jersey, and Columbia, South Carolina, told Reuters they are moving ahead with applications. Several cities benefited in the past from the grants, when money was given directly to community-based organizations.
In late September, the DOJ announced that it was changing its Community-Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative to exclude community organizations from direct funding and prohibit services for undocumented residents. It also cut total funding of the program to $34.6 million. The grants were first appropriated in 2022 with $50 million for CVI and an additional $50 million was allocated over five years under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Last week, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed the program shift in a statement and said the funding will also be used to hire more law enforcement officers, purchase equipment and “build criminal justice system capacity.”
The rewrite of the grants “reflects our belief that the best way to prevent violence in our communities is through robust support for law enforcement,” the statement said.
However, two former DOJ officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, as well as community interventionists and gun violence experts, said the agency’s goals deviate from the program’s original intent. The new goals, they said, reflect a broader ideological shift that steers resources away from historically marginalized communities impacted by crime.
“Now, the funds must pass through a government agency,” said Jordan Costa, associate director for the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention. Community-based organizations can only be subrecipients, and they would presumably have to comply with the same mandates.”
SOME SEE ‘OVERREACH’ BY ADMINISTRATION
President Donald Trump has made immigration crackdowns a cornerstone of his political agenda. He has also sought to strip federal grants from cities that refuse to comply with requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain suspected undocumented immigrants.
“I don’t know how tying immigration into gang violence intervention even makes sense,” said Reneé Hall, president of The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “This is just another overreach of the administration in an effort to further its agenda.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Reuters in a statement last week that the administration has been successful in its approach to mitigating crime.
“Any insinuation that the Trump administration isn’t successfully combatting dangerous crime is false and uninformed.”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Deputy Chief of Police Melron Kelly said earlier this month that his grant staff submitted an application for funding and is seeking answers to what cooperation with immigration enforcement would entail.
“There are always some parameters when you ask for federal dollars – but not specific to how you’re going to enforce the law or what laws to enforce,” said Kelly.
(Reporting by Bianca Flowers in Chicago; Editing by Kat Stafford and Matthew Lewis)
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