Confusion and Concern Over Federal Funding Freeze
El Paso nonprofits, higher education institutions, health care providers and governments were gripped by uncertainty Tuesday, trying to understand the potential impact of a Trump administration order that temporarily suspended billions of dollars in federal grants.
“It was not a nice way to wake up this morning, but it’s not totally unexpected,” said Miguel Hernandez, executive director of the El Paso County Housing Authority largely funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “When Trump took office the first time, he also cut the HUD budget.”
Hernandez said like everyone else, he and his staff are scrambling to figure out exactly how the federal grant suspension impacts their budget and services. The authority serves 315 families with project-based apartments and voucher programs throughout the county but outside the El Paso city limits and outside the Town of Anthony, both of which have their own housing authorities.
Temporary Court Block on the Order
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday issued an order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from pausing grant and loan payments. The judge’s order continues through Monday while she hears a lawsuit brought by a national group that supports nonprofits.
U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, in a news conference Tuesday afternoon said Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do – even if he doesn’t have the authority to do so – and stealing investments promised to American families.
“No new president has the right or the legal authority to do what President Trump did, and I’m relieved that a court is putting a pause on the very negative impact it could have had,” she said, noting that it’s Congress that “has the power of the purse” to approve funding. “Even if after a few days the freeze is reinstated, that is not enough time for organizations or for local governments or for agencies to prepare for what these cuts could mean.”
In a memo to federal agencies Monday, Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, said “federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
Programs and Services at Risk
Escobar said federally funded programs are critical in every community, but particularly in those such as El Paso with high need.
“Federal dollars impact every single person in the United States of America, in every community, in every neighborhood, regardless of who you are, where you live, federal dollars touch your lives,” she said. “In some communities and with some organizations, the impact is more significant.”
Escobar said federal funding touches many aspects of people’s everyday lives, including roads, child care, schools and education, cancer research, suicide prevention programs for veterans, affordable housing and programs that keep people housed, among others.
El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson at the news conference said the city is digging through its budget to outline federally funded programs, saying that staff have identified about 60 grants that could be impacted. He didn’t put a dollar amount to the potential impact, saying that’s still being determined.
The city receives federal funding for public safety, transportation, Community Development Block Grants funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and for various capital improvement projects, among others, according to city budget documents.
“If this order was to be left in place, it could have affected our airport services. That could have affected our public transportation, which is Sun Metro,” he said. “So, regardless of political affiliation, an executive order like this, it doesn’t pick a side.”
El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego cited jails, Meals on Wheels for the elderly and animal services among the slew of county-run programs funded largely through federal grants – many of which, he said, require local matches that have already been allocated and which also pay the salaries of some employees. Without federal funding, he said, taxpayers would be left to foot the bill of many services.
“If you don’t have the grants, the way we are able to do things in this community is by taxpayer dollars,” Samaniego said during the news conference. “So, every time that we use grants, that’s less of an impact on your taxes. Every time we don’t have grants, then, obviously, the tax base will rise and then we will have difficulty doing things.”
Housing and Community Assistance
Laura Ponce, executive director Project Bravo, in an interview with El Paso Matters said there’s a major lack of clarity about what the Trump administration’s order means, but she said it will likely affect a wide-range of nonprofit organizations.
“I’m just trying to run a program to help people who are vulnerable right now, and trying to get them back on their feet so they can be self-sufficient,” Ponce said. “Nowhere in there are we assessing whether or not our clients are woke, or whether our staff is woke.”
Impact on Housing, Food Assistance, and Social Services
Project Bravo, a nonprofit community action agency, provides services to El Pasoans such as utility bill assistance, home energy efficiency upgrades and career and health-related programs. The nonprofit in 2023 disbursed $10.9 million to individuals from federal grants such as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
For her organization, Ponce said an important question she’s trying to get an answer to is whether the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs – which directs federal grant dollars to local nonprofits – has already received federal funding for the year or not. If it hasn’t, then Project Bravo’s funding may be disrupted, Ponce said.
The memo exempted Social Security and Medicare payments, as well as other direct assistance to individuals. But the vague language in the memo caused widespread confusion among organizations receiving federal grants, and drew criticism from Democrats in Congress, who said the Trump administration had no power to withhold money approved by Congress and signed by the president.
In a follow-up email to El Paso Matters, Hernandez said that given the scope of the order, the authority is assessing whether it will specifically impact rental assistance “or other critical funds that help us provide affordable housing in our community. At this time, the full extent of the freeze’s impact is unclear.”
The city’s housing authority, Housing Opportunity Management Enterprises, in a statement said it’s monitoring the situation, which will likely take a few days to be clarified by the federal government or through the courts. HOME provides various housing assistance to some 52,000 El Pasoans in about 100 communities and 12,000 units, according to the authority’s 2023 annual report. The largest developer of affordable housing in Texas, HOME serves low-income families, people with disabilities, the elderly and veterans.
El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank, the region’s primary hunger relief organization and a Feeding America member, is working to understand how the executive orders may impact its operations and funding. The food bank distributes millions of pounds of food annually to 132 partner pantries and serves 160,000 food-insecure individuals across the Borderland, and is funded in part by federal grants.
“El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank is currently reviewing the potential impact of the new executive orders on our operations and funding. At this time, we are working to determine which grants, if any, may be affected,” said Lonnie Valencia, the food bank’s director of communications. “We will provide further comment once we have a clear understanding of if, when, and how we may be impacted.”
The organization plays a vital role in addressing food insecurity in the region, providing food assistance through mobile pantries, SNAP applications and nutrition education.
Georgina Hernandez, CEO of United Way of El Paso, said a review of her agency’s federal grants indicated that a grant of $314,895 for emergency food and shelter could be suspended under the Trump administration order.
A spokesperson for Amistad, an organization that serves the elderly, persons with disabilities and persons-at-risk, said the organization has not been notified of any change in service and doesn’t know how its programs will be impacted. Its services rely on a diverse mix of federal, state and local funding, along with community donations.
Amistad provides support to more than 30,000 people a year with non-emergency medical transportation, mental health, career-building, and access to healthcare.
The Opportunity Center for the Homeless, which operates several shelters for families, men, women and the older population, relies on a $450,000 annual grant for its operations that could now be in jeopardy, said Executive Director John Martin.
Martin said the organization is in the middle of a $15 million expansion that would add about 165 new beds for the local homeless population to its network of shelters, most administered through the city’s HUD, HOME and Community Development Block Grants funded with federal dollars. He said he doesn’t know yet if federal funding for those projects will be cut or what other programs may be impacted.
“Yes, we are very concerned,” he said, adding that the center has seen an increase in local homeless people since the pandemic. “We knew the numbers would increase during the pandemic and anticipated they would decline after. We are not seeing that. In fact, we are seeing numbers remain steady and even increase slightly.”
Martin distinguished that the services and population numbers he’s citing refer to the “local homeless,” and doesn’t account for the temporary increase in “international homeless,” or migrants, that the organization assisted at the height of the arrivals and have mostly disappeared since late last year, he said.
In comparison, the Rescue Mission of El Paso is almost exclusively privately funded, primarily through local donors, Chief Executive Director Blake Barrow said. The organization provides shelter, meal services, street outreach and drug and alcohol relapse prevention programs to the homeless and other at-risk populations.
Barrow said the Rescue Mission received some federal funding through the county when it operated shelters for migrants, which were closed Dec. 31 after a sharp decline in migrants arriving at the border – and in anticipation that Trump would cut funding for migrant services.
“If you rely heavily on the federal dollars, then it could change with the wind,” he said. “We cannot afford to do that to the people we serve.”
The county of El Paso had managed several federal grants for migrant assistance programs, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for its temporary migrant center and on behalf of some nongovernmental organizations such as the Opportunity Center and the Rescue Mission.
But the county shut down its Migrant Support Services Center in December in anticipation of no longer receiving FEMA funding under the Trump administration. The number of migrants arriving in the area and requiring assistance had plummeted since last summer when the Biden administration implemented asylum restrictions.
El Paso County Commissioner David Stout, however, said the county also receives millions in federal grants for law enforcement, infrastructure, veteran’s services and its senior nutrition program, among others. He said the county would not be able to make up for the loss in its budget if federal grant funding is cut off, although he didn’t have a dollar figure on the potential impact.
“Over the last number of years, we’ve made a very intentional effort to try to increase the number of grant opportunities that we tap into at the federal level,” Stout said.
Stout said county staff is trying to assess the potential impact losing federal grants would have on the county, including those it has historically relied on and new ones for which it recently applied.
“I don’t even know what to think. To be quite honest with you, it’s crazy – this is madness,” Stout said. “It’s madness where we need to be spending time on providing service to our community, not going through every single policy that we have, trying to decide whether we think it’s going to be considered DEI or a woke policy.”
Area school districts and higher education institutions are also working to decipher how they might be impacted.
The Ysleta Independent School District said it receives about $67 million from the federal government, which represents about 13% of the district’s $507 million budget. District officials did not comment on how the loss of federal loans or grants could impact its roughly 35,000 students.
The El Paso Independent School District, which serves over 49,000 students, in a statement said it is reviewing the suspension “to assess its potential impact on our programs, funding, and operations.” The 47,000-student Socorro Independent School District in a statement said it does not yet know “what funds will be excepted from the directive, or what the implications will be.”
El Paso Community College issued a statement that the order could affect its programs, and that it planned to monitor the situation, seek clarification and keep the public informed.
“We understand this situation is stressful, but know we are all navigating these circumstances together,” the statement reads.
While the Department of Education stated that work-study programs, Pell grants and direct student loans will not be impacted by this order, some university researchers expressed concern over the future of their federally funded projects.
Bruce Cushing, president of the Faculty Senate at the University of Texas at El Paso, said he has spoken to more than a handful of UTEP researchers who are concerned about how this will affect their programs, including their ability to pay their staff that includes students, or if purchase orders would be processed.
He also pointed out that some grants are sent to the university as a lump sum and in other cases are divided over the life of the grant. In the case of the latter, he assumed the money would not be forthcoming.
The professor of biological sciences said the executive order has generated uncertainty and stress.
“The unknown is often scarier than the known,” said Cushing, a trained behavioral neuroscientist. “That is the big thing right now. This is an unprecedented event, and I don’t know who’s prepared for an unprecedented event.”
Disclosure: El Paso Matters CEO Bob Moore is board chair of El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated throughout to include comments from U.S. representatives, city and county leaders, schools and area nonprofits. This is a developing story and will be updated periodically.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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