A federal judge on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration for breaching a court order by attempting to unlawfully pressure states into aligning with federal immigration objectives in exchange for disaster relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

In the ongoing legal case, the plaintiffs, led by Illinois, claim the “grant funding hostage scheme” breaches the U.S. Constitution’s spending clause along with various elements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the federal law that regulates agency conduct.

On September 24, U.S. District Judge William E. Smith, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The court denounced the situation as “excessively coercive and invalid” and unconstitutional, as well as “arbitrary and capricious” according to the APA.

Earlier this month, the plaintiffs submitted another motion to enforce or clarify the September ruling, bringing the court’s attention to several questionable phrases and terms included “in all grant awards given under several key preparedness programs managed” by FEMA.

The usual language associated with legal requirements is largely absent, as shown by a document tracking changes to the awards. Nonetheless, the government-issued documents continue to push those immigration priorities using less-direct yet still firm wording.

For example, terms like “must” are replaced with terms like “will” in some instances. Meanwhile, the term “must” is added into other locations. Additionally, some certification language has been deleted from some sections of the awards while added to other sections.

Another addition, however, retains substantially similar language of enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration priorities, but makes compliance conditional on a favorable court ruling.

The motion to enforce or clarify explains, at length:

In the week after the Court entered judgment, defendants copy-pasted the Contested Conditions into a new grant term…In a gesture at compliance with the judgment, defendants temporarily stayed the operation of this Immigration Compliance Article, but with a trigger clause that will cause it to snap into effect “immediately” “[i]f the injunction is stayed, vacated, or extinguished.” Plaintiff States are, as a result, still required to certify, as a condition of obtaining federal funds, that they will be in compliance with the Immigration Compliance Article immediately upon any interruption of the Court’s injunction.

Now, in a three-page order enforcing the judgment, Smith framed the new language as a clear violation of his earlier order.

“Despite the Court’s order, Defendants have now inserted the contested conditions into Plaintiff States’ award letters for DHS grants,” the enforcement order reads. “To accept these awards, Plaintiff States must therefore agree to comply with the contested conditions.”

Smith also criticizes the new DHS award letters for attempting to impose an unstated “condition precedent” on the plaintiffs, accusing the government of trying to force the states to agree to comply with language that has already been vacated — or legally nullified — under the APA but which might be revived at some later date by some later court. The judge, in trenchantly cutting language, is not amused.

“In effect, Defendants have done precisely what the Memorandum and Order forbids, which is requiring Plaintiff States to agree to assist in federal immigration enforcement or else forgo the award of DHS grants,” the order continues. “The fig leaf conditional nature of the requirement makes little difference. No matter how confident Defendants may be of their chances on appeal, at present, the contested conditions are unlawful. Plaintiff States therefore have a right to accept the awards without regard to the contested conditions. Defendants’ new condition is not a good faith effort to comply with the order; it is a ham-handed attempt to bully the states into making promises they have no obligation to make at the risk of losing critical disaster and other funding already appropriated by Congress.”

The court goes on to reiterate that the prohibited conditions are already defined in the September order but equates them with the new language included in the latest batch of award letters — separately setting aside and vacating the new language as well.

In addition, the relatively terse order issues a new injunction, permanently barring the Trump administration from “enforcing against Plaintiff States and their instrumentalities and subdivisions” any of the conditions at issue in the litigation or “any materially similar term requiring cooperation with federal immigration enforcement as a condition on federal funds.”

The government now has until Oct. 21 to rescind the old award letters and issue new award letters without such prohibited language.