Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Alfonso Griego says a federally funded college success program was the key for him to move forward on the path to becoming a veterinarian for farm animals.
“I would have dropped out of college,” Griego said of the program, which is only available for U.S. citizens or immigrants with green cards and has gotten bipartisan support from lawmakers for more than 50 years.
That program at El Paso Community College is one of dozens across the country facing an uncertain future after the Trump administration refused to spend money lawmakers set aside for it, part of an $800 million “pocket rescission” move that Congress’ watchdog said violated the law.
Two of the programs caught in the cuts — the High School Equivalency Program, HEP, and the College Assistance Migrant Program, CAMP — were created in the late 60s and early 70s to educate migrant seasonal farmworkers and their families. While CAMP restricts participation to U.S. citizens or green card holders, HEP also allows undocumented immigrants.
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The Trump administration, in announcing the cuts, cast the two programs as subsidizing “aliens to come to the U.S. and utilize our education system at the expense of American workers and their children.”
Andres Muro, who’s built HEP and CAMP at El Paso Community College over the past 25 years, said that by the end of the year approximately 40 staff members will lose their jobs and participants won’t get GED classes, and after June, first-year college students won’t have the support that helped Griego thrive.
“These are the people that feed us,” Muro said of migrant farmworkers. “Everything we put in our mouth, from myself to the president of the United States, comes from their labor.”
In the past fiscal year, 105 people enrolled to earn a GED through HEP at El Paso Community College, and 42 college students got access to mentoring, tutoring and free laptops through CAMP, Muro said.
“They are United States workers who work very, very hard to feed us, and to treat them this way, to me, is unacceptable,” Muro said.
In total, more than 70 community colleges and universities had been waiting for months for the Trump administration to choose who’d get the next round of HEP and CAMP grants. Instead, more than half of the $52 million won’t get spent, and the rest of the funds went to programs that had more time left on their five-year grants.
The National HEP-CAMP Association filed a long-shot lawsuit against the Education Department to release the funds on Sept. 30, the last day of the fiscal year. It’s the second year in a row it has had to do so. Housing groups hit in the rescissions have also sued the administration.
Last year, the Trump administration also missed the July 1 deadline to award the HEP and CAMP grants. The government only made the decision to cancel the competition for new awards on Sept. 15, 2025, nearly a month after the association sued, according to court documents.
Greg Contreras, director of CAMP at Portland Community College, said that switchup last year caused the community college to close its HEP program after 15 years. He said he’s now focused on keeping CAMP alive without a budget and enough funds for salary until the spring semester.
“They’re trying to starve us out, they’re trying to zero us out, by just frontloading a few programs, canceling the rest or defunding the rest,” Contreras said.
Students who already finished their first year are volunteering as mentors to serve the current cohort of 40 students. PCC’s CAMP recruits students from high schools serving kids whose parents work mostly in grape and blueberry farms and plant nurseries, Contreras said.
“I don’t agree at all with the administration’s portrayal of what they think a migrant is or what they think our programs are,” he said. “I would love for the administration to meet my students; they would see that these students want to be here in America.”
The White House rescissions package also targeted grants that funded citizenship classes for permanent residents eligible for the naturalization process. However, the Department of Homeland Security canceled that program in March 2025.
That freezing of the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program prompted backlash from dozens of Democratic lawmakers, who demanded U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reinstate it. Congress had funded the grants since 2009.
The rescissions announcement labels the integration grants as Biden-era programs that “laundered taxpayer dollars to radical open borders NGOs who provided legal services to illegal aliens.” It named the National Partnership for New Americans as an example.
Nicole Melaku, NPNA’s executive director, said she was surprised the organization was named on the list because their grant ended in 2024.
“It’s a blatant mischaracterization of our work,” Melaku said. “They named us as an open borders group, that is simply not what we do. NPNA, for years, has advocated for access to citizenship for lawful permanent residents.”
USCIS had previously touted the grant as helping more than 350,000 immigrants prepare to become citizens. But for the second Trump administration, a 75% drop in naturalizations is a victory.
Solutions in Hometown Connections in the D.C. metro area had a two-year grant for the integration program that ended in September 2025. Merritt Groeschel, the founder and executive director, said SHC has been able to continue providing classes but has scaled back other services through funds from the Greater Washington Community Foundation.
“Our students are in class saying that their dream is to be a U.S. citizen, and you want to take that away,” Groeschel said. “That is such a good thing about the United States. I just find it really sad.”
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