On September 25, the Trump Administration proposed cuts totaling $810 million. The package rescinds funding Congress appropriated to support refugee and immigrant service programs the Administration deems “wasteful spending”.

“The idea that immigrants are draining on the country and the economy is just fabricated,” warns Dr Amelia Frank-Vitale, Anthropologist and Princeton University Professor. She understands the rescission as part of “a project of telling the world: ‘the United States does not want you here’— whether you have skills, whether you have needs for protection.”

To her, it all points in the same direction: “This administration is firmly anti-immigrant.”

The move has been denounced as “illegal” by Members of the House Appropriations Committee. Timing is what makes it contentious. And the clock is no longer ticking.

After the White House submits a rescission, Congress has 45 days to act before the funds expire. By timing the request so the window runs past September 30, the end of the fiscal year, the administration has effectively cancelled them without congressional vote.

The Government Accountability Office denounces that letting funds expire this way violates the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, House Appropriations Committee Member, calls the maneuver a line-item veto. Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley echoes her call, arguing it is “Congress, not the president, who decides what programs are designed and at what level they are funded.”

No need for Refugee Resettlement: the Administration has got you covered!

The proposal’s largest cut removes $567 million from the $6.3 billion allocated in FY 2024 to the Refugee and Entrant Assistance Account, which funds Office of Refugee Resettlement programs.

This is not the first reduction in the account. In its Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees for 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services had already lowered funds by $893 million compared to 2023.

Now the Administration deems the account “overfunded due to the Administration’s successful border policies,” citing Executive Order 14165, “Securing Our Borders,” and Executive Order 14163, “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program“. Their rescission proposal also argues that programs financed by the account are operated by “pro-illegal immigration non-profits, which provide services to refugees, asylees, and other eligible non-citizens, and put unaccompanied alien children in harm’s way”.

So what exactly is the Account financing?

This border policy rationale sits somewhat awkwardly with what the account actually pays for. The Refugee and Entrant Assistance account helps refugees, asylees and humanitarian parolees, among others, “become employed and self-sufficient as quickly as possible”.

The cuts are felt harshly on the ground and are mounting on years of financial pressure. Jennifer Chacón, who supports Refugee Resettlement at New York Catholic Charities, knows it firsthand. As she puts it, “The little funds we still have are provided by the state. We were a team of between 100 and 80 people; today we are 15.” Organizations feel increasingly discouraged; “We decided to stop applying for these types of grants,” she adds.

Following the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the account also serves another vital purpose: financing the care and placement of unaccompanied children apprehended by immigration authorities.  Looking at the 2024 account plan paints a better picture of what this entails—equalizing benefits for minors in the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URM) program and families separated at the US-Mexico border during Trump’s First Term; and providing immigration legal assistance to children and youth in the URM.

Fewer people crossing the border do not reduce the need for these services.  Chacón agrees, “We are assisting the same amount of people with limited personnel and resources.”

Father Fabián Arias, a volunteer at New Sanctuary Coalition and Saint Peter’s Church, has been accompanying minors at risk of deportation to court since 2000.

For him, the loss goes beyond basic services.  The cuts also strip away a sense of protection for the children he accompanies to court. “It is a matter of protection—of ensuring they are not alone—because when they are alone, they are far more vulnerable to a system that seeks to abuse them.”

His eyes water when he thinks of the children, lined up before court in borrowed suits that fall from their shoulders. “Being uprooted from the place that has seen you grow is very painful—it is overwhelming enough as it is, without having to fight alone, without any protection system.”

At Saint Peter’s Church, the legal clinic that supports them is struggling to stay afloat. “They do not even have the budget to assist the minimum number of people requiring this type of support,” Arias says.

The situation he describes is desperate. Many lack the financial means to hire a private lawyer, and “support organizations are overwhelmed and unable to take on their cases”.

Putting the American Pocket First

The Administration’s justification promises to end “the use of Federal taxpayer dollars to support non-citizens, putting Americans first.”

Where is the taxpayers’ money really going? Dr Frank-Vitale points to detention: holding more people, she says, “is what cost[s] the taxpayer more than anything.”

Spanning border security and interior enforcement, DHS has seen a record-breaking influx of funds in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

The 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) and the House Homeland Security Committee’s budget reconciliation recommendations allocated $56.7 billion for DHS.  Immigration centers alone received $45 billion, and ICE received a further $30 billion to expand its workforce.

The Secure America Act of 2026 then added $69.5 billion to ICE and CBP for immigration enforcement functions, including transport to and from detention facilities and operational costs of mass deportations.

What worries Dr Frank-Vitale is not that the streamline is being cut, but that it is being diverted. “It’s not that there isn’t funding,” she notes. “It’s just being chosen to be directed towards enforcement, in extreme amounts, rather than towards due process.”

While humanitarian services are defunded, security enforcement has expanded; the contrast is the point: “We have to put the context of defunding services against the hyper amount of funding that’s been provided for enforcement,” she adds.

This is felt most starkly at humanitarian protection and adjudication systems. In 2025, Congress allocated just $800 million to the immigration court system. Department of Justice received $3.3 billion for immigration enforcement under OBBBA, but funding is divided among prosecutions, local-government reimbursements and counter-narcotics work. Immigration judges are only one allowable use. Even then, the same law caps immigration judges at 800 from 2028, only 100 more than when it passed.

The cap becomes more concerning as backlogs are mounting. By the middle of FY 2026, more than 3.5 million cases were pending resolution, and an immigration judge’s average caseload stood at 5,450. Congress has provided $11.4 billion to immigration courts from 2003 through 2026. This is only one-fourth of the amount appropriated for ICE detention in 2025.

Challenging the Cut

California and six other states have sued President Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, arguing the pocket rescission constitutes an unlawful impounding of congressionally appropriated funds.

Spearheading the lawsuit, California Attorney General Bonta firmly believes the cuts are damaging the livelihoods of his constituents: “No President has ever worked so hard to rip healthcare, childcare, housing, and educational opportunities away from families. He should be ashamed. We’re going to court — once again — to protect against the rampant abuses of power by this Administration.”

As the lawsuit pends settlement, all left to do is wait.