The Justice Department announced on Monday it will award more than $98 million to local police departments, giving preferential treatment to 80% of the recipients because they'd agreed to let federal immigration officers inside local jails and notify federal authorities about undocumented immigrants in local custody.



The grants are part of a broader effort by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reward cities that cooperate with the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, while threatening to block standard-issue crime-fighting grants from dozens of jurisdictions that may have adopted sanctuary policies.

The community-policing grants announced Monday will disburse $98,495,397 to 179 local law enforcement agencies, which will hire 802 officers, as part of the Justice Department's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) hiring program.

In doing so, Sessions is further reshaping the agency's community policing office, which under former President Obama emphasized building trust between police officers and citizens through grants and civil-rights reforms. Sessions has instead pressed the division to fight violent crime, turn in unauthorized immigrants, and abandon efforts to systematically reform police departments.

Sessions in September announced he would use a point-based system to grade applicants for the community policing money, giving additional marks to those that agreed to give the Department of Homeland Security access to detention facilities and provide at least 48 hours notice before releasing an undocumented immigrant.

A Justice Department official said Monday that 80% percent of the 179 agencies that got the grants received extra points because they agreed to those requests. The remaining 20% scored high enough without agreeing to the terms. Those 20% may include jurisdictions that do not operate a detention facility, the official said. Many cities have contracts with county-run jails, potentially putting those cities at a disadvantage when seeking grants because they are unable to earn those points.

Local police departments also got an advantage if they sought to hire officers to fight violent crime, assist in homeland security, or combat unauthorized immigrants.