A tunnel under New York's Hudson River may be imperiled. In Los Angeles, millions of dollars could be at stake for port improvements. And other communities’ hopes for major transportation projects could be caught in the crossfire as President Donald Trump threatens to strip federal funding from “sanctuary cities” that defy his immigration policies.

Considering that Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have all declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, Trump’s reprisals could end up canceling or delaying major infrastructure projects in some of the nation’s most congested areas — even as the administration touts a $1 trillion proposal to rebuild the United States’ roads, railroads, bridges and airports.


Trump issued an executive order last month that declares a “policy” of blocking federal funds for cities, states and other jurisdictions that refuse to provide information and assistance to federal immigration authorities. That puts potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on the chopping block, and transportation advocates say the damage could extend far beyond Trump's intended targets.

“Wouldn’t punishing a city with a loss of transit funding have deleterious effects on an entire region?” asked Steve Davis, communications director for the advocacy group Transportation for America. “D.C. for example — if the District lost transportation funding, wouldn’t Prince William or other outlying counties pay part of the price too in congestion, lost productivity and economic turmoil?”

Some sanctuary city leaders have been defiant. "We won't be intimidated by threats to our federal funding," Boston Mayor Marty Walsh wrote in an op-ed after Trump's order came out, adding: "[W]e won't place money ahead of our neighbors' safety and security." Then again, he acknowledged this month, federal money "runs the city."

Complicating the debate, the administration has yet to spell out exactly which projects or communities it plans to cut off. "There are so many questions," said Robert Puentes, CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a D.C. think tank.

For one thing, Puentes noted, “cities don’t get federal highway money directly” — the money flows through state governments or regional bodies known as metropolitan planning organizations. Under Trump’s order, “does it mean states or MPOs can’t spend their federal money in those cities?” he asked.

“Some cities get money for transit but what about the money that flows to transit authorities or airport authorities?” he asked. “Does it mean the Army [Corps of Engineers] wouldn’t dredge canals in southeast Louisiana because New Orleans is a sanctuary city?"

Even the U.S. Department of Transportation is trying to figure out how the executive order might affect the dollars it doles out. So are cities around the country.

“I don’t know how to answer these questions,” said a person in the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti in Los Angeles, the first U.S. city to declare itself a “sanctuary” in 1979. "These are all the questions that are being asked by every office and every elected official, from the top down, in every city in America right now.”

Garcetti told CNN's Anderson Cooper that cities are the "engine of opportunity ... where American goods come through and jobs are generated," and that they deserve to get their own tax dollars back.

Trump’s order declares that sanctuary cities “have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic,” and tells the attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security to “ensure” they are not eligible for federal grants — “to the extent consistent with law.”

But though the feds are set to dole out $43 billion for highways nationwide during this fiscal year, it's not apparent how much of that money would go to sanctuary cities. What's clear, though, is that virtually all of the heavily Democratic urban areas declaring themselves "sanctuaries" have accepted or are seeking hundreds of millions of federal dollars to advance major transportation projects.

For instance, Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. — which is considering becoming a sanctuary city — have been looking for federal help with improving their busy ports. Having lost out on $90 million in grants last summer from a DOT program called FASTLANE, officials have hoped for better luck in the current round. But a discretionary grant program like this would be an easy place for the government to enforce its ban. So would a separate DOT grant program, called TIGER.

But it could be a different matter for so-called formula funding, which is handed out through a major transportation bill that Congress typically enacts every few years. That money doesn't typically go directly to cities, so it could be trickier for the Trump administration to isolate one city’s allocation for withholding.

Similarly, DOT’s New Starts funding is awarded to transit authorities, which often span multiple cities, counties or states — although specific projects in target cities, such as $2 billion of federal funds in the pipeline for the Second Avenue Subway in New York, could be on the chopping block. Bay Area Rapid Transit, which serves the region around San Francisco, is considering becoming the country's first "sanctuary transit system," which could imperil its hopes of getting a New Starts grant to extend rail service through downtown San Jose to Santa Clara.

A federal aid cutoff could be even more consequential for the Gateway Program, a multibillion-dollar effort through which New York and New Jersey are trying to expand capacity in the antiquated bottleneck of a rail tunnel under the Hudson River.

New York is a sanctuary city. So is Newark, N.J., where the Gateway Program envisions building four new tracks to New York City's Penn Station. Just like that, the federal half of the Gateway’s $20 billion price tag could be in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, the Maryland transportation department has applied for a $155 million FASTLANE grant to expand Baltimore’s Howard Street train tunnel, which is too short to allow double-stacked rail cars to pass through. (As a result, just 10 percent of freight at the Port of Baltimore travels by rail.) But the city’s sanctuary designation may scuttle its chance.

Many mayors of sanctuary cities have vowed to resist. Even as he instructed city departments to prepare for a potentially significant hit to their budgets, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray asserted that "this city will not be bullied by this administration."

The Trump administration seems unmoved by the rhetoric.

“Federal agencies are going to unapologetically enforce the law, no ifs or buts,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at a news conference announcing the action. “We’re going to strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants. The American people are no longer going to have to be forced to subsidize this disregard for our laws.”

Some cities are treading lightly.

Lee Brand, the mayor of Fresno, Calif., said he wants to keep access to federal grant money.

“I’m not going to make Fresno a sanctuary city because I don’t want to make Fresno ineligible from receiving potentially millions of dollars in infrastructure and other types of projects,” Brand told the Fresno Bee in late January. “My philosophy is to follow the law and to avoid these national culture-war questions.”

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio argues that his city is protected from retaliation by the 2012 Supreme Court decision that upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate but allowed states to opt out of its expansion of Medicaid. In that case, the court said a threat by the federal government to withhold a large enough sum of money is like “holding a gun to the head” of states and cities, making it too coercive to be constitutional.

"We believe that we are on solid ground for the legal challenge to the executive order, should the occasion arise and be necessary," de Blasio said the day Trump signed the order.

On the other hand, courts have upheld the federal government's right to withhold some kinds of transportation funding if a state does not enact certain policies, as the Reagan administration and Congress did with highway money in the 1980s to get states to raise their drinking age to 21.

When it comes to formula funding, isolating cities may prove too difficult. But sanctuary states like California, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont would be far easier to target, as would the District of Columbia. New York state is undergoing steps to become a sanctuary as well.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has admitted privately that she’s unsure about including money for a new express bus line in her next budget, in part because she’s worried about how Trump’s order will affect the District’s revenues, according to a senior Metro official who spoke with her. Bowser has affirmed that D.C. will remain a sanctuary city, even as Council Budget Director Jen Budoff noted in a tweet that "the District receives over $1b per year in federal grants. Everything from senior nutrition to refugee resettlement to arts grants."