Service organizations that rely on federal funding are reeling from changes brought about by the new presidential administration, and many are rethinking how to adapt to possible (and, in some cases, already enacted) cessations of federal funding sources.
“As of right now, it’s week by week, focusing on the clients’ needs and diversifying our funding,” said Kentucky Refugee Ministries Resettlement Director Wilson Mejia.
Kentucky Refugee Ministries, which has an office in Covington and is often shortened to KRM, was founded in 2021 originally to aid Afghani refugees fleeing their country in the wake of U.S. troop withdrawal.
Since then, they’ve expanded their services to help more families from other countries, including Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and countries in Latin America. When LINK nky spoke with Mejia last week, he said the organization had resettled about 750 people since the it’s formation.
Immigrant and refugee service organizations have been especially hard hit by federal changes. Following the issuance of new executive orders in January, about 80% of Kentucky Refugee Ministries’ funding, which comes from federal grants, was frozen.
Prior to the changes, the organization had expected to receive about 180 clients for the fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. With the funding no longer guaranteed, however, they’ve been forced to stop taking on new clients. Prior to the executive orders, the organization had received 46 new clients, and they’re now unable to accept more.
“So we had a couple of Afghan cases in Afghanistan that were scheduled to travel to the United States for safety, and that also was stopped,” Mejia said. “So, those folks received the devastating news they no longer are going to be able to go to a place that they can feel safe.”
“I think, as of January and February, we’re only helping around 20 clients with rent or utilities,” said KRM’s Housing Coordinator Rhys Boatwright. “And for some of them, it’s like $200 towards their rent from grants that we’ve received. So, I know a lot of the concern about refugee resettlement is that it’s a drain on the economy, but from our experience, it’s very much the opposite of that. We have served many, many clients and are now helping very few in any direct way. They’ve become self-sufficient. They’re desperate to become self-sufficient.”
Other organizations have been feeling the squeeze, too. The Immigrant and Refugee Law Center, which is based in Cincinnati but serves clients in Northern Kentucky, announced last week they’d been directed to stop representing unaccompanied children fleeing hardship.
“In less than 48 hours,” however, according to a subsequent announcement, “members of the public sent more than 15,000 letters to Congress demanding that our critical work be reinstated.” The organization announced on Feb. 21 that the restriction against representing children had been lifted.
Other immigrant service and community groups have also turned out in the wake of federal changes to offer various services to local migrants and refugees, including educational and outreach efforts to inform migrants of their rights in case ICE comes knocking.
But immigrant service organizations aren’t the only ones who might be affected by the federal changes.
“There is a lot of angst in our community, and not just in our community but in communities like ours across the commonwealth in terms of what other decisions are going to be made and what will the impacts be,” said Rick Wurth, the CEO of the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky Behavioral Health. “The vast majority of the folks that we take care of – even though we take care of a wide swath of people of different age ranges and different socioeconomic status backgrounds – the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the folks that we serve presently are tied to a Kentucky Medicaid card.”
The Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky is one of the oldest service organizations in the region, originally operating as an orphanage called the Covington Protestant Children’s Home in 1882 before gradually evolving into the youth mental health and therapeutic provider it is today.
The organization provided just over 36,000 individual services in 2024, according to its annual report. Like Wurth said, many of its clients rely on Medicaid, which is disbursed by the federal government and then distributed to patients at the state level.
Although no changes to Medicaid have yet occurred, GOP officials in Congress have floated the idea of reducing the program’s budget or adding work requirements. About 80 million people nationwide (just under 25% of the total U.S. population) rely on Medicaid for healthcare coverage. When Arkansas enacted a work requirement for Medicaid during the first Trump administration, about 18,000 people lost coverage. A federal judge later struck down the requirement.
The Trump administration’s federal funding freeze is currently moving through the courts following a slew of legal challenges. In the meantime, organizations are considering alternatives to keep their operations going.
For instance, KRM is partnering with West Sixth Brewing in Covington during the month of February. For every beer flight purchased at the establishment, West Sixth will donate $1 to KRM. West Sixth and KRM will also be hosting a happy hour on Feb. 28 to raise money. Finally, the organization has set up a GoFundMe to aid in raising money, as well.
“There’s been a lot of community movement happening across the country…,” Boatwright said. “That one executive order, I think, sent a lot of fear into people and activated a lot of people because I don’t think anyone expected that kind of thing to happen.”
You can learn more about the organizations in this article, including how to donate, at their websites below: