Federal funding freeze hits program that helps Santa Cruz County residents become citizens

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One of the most important services that Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County’s Immigration Project provides is its work helping people to apply to become U.S. citizens, according to program director Kate Hinnenkamp. It’s the final step of the immigrant journey, she said. Now, some of the funding that helped support those services has been cut short. 

In February, Hinnenkamp received a brief letter from the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services notifying her that a two-year federal grant for $300,000 had been frozen. The funding, intended for naturalization application assistance, was set to expire in September, she said.

The $300,000 grant was split between CAB and Watsonville/Aptos/Santa Cruz Adult Education, said Hinnenkamp. The funding allowed the partnership to expand on the existing naturalization assistance each provided to the community, she said. CAB has provided application help for 35 years, and WASC Adult Education has taught citizenship classes for nearly a century. 

The letter from USCIS, provided by Hinnenkamp, reads: “Pursuant to the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s memorandum dated January 28, 2025, and effective immediately, your grant from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services is frozen. We recognize this will have an impact on your organization. We are unable to provide a timeline on this freeze. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Community Action Board focuses on helping individuals with filing citizenship applications, and requires them to take classes at WASC Adult Education to help them prepare for the citizenship exam. In return, the adult school actively refers people to the nonprofit for legal help. 

The classes at the adult school teach students how to speak and write basic English, U.S. history and civics, how to be an engaged citizen, and what to expect during the citizenship interview and exam. The classes are offered in both English and Spanish. Both the classes and the application assistance are free, said Hinnenkamp. 

Since receiving the grant 16 months ago, the nonprofit has helped file 242 naturalization applications, she said. It’s also helped the organization bring on another staff member and to send staff to classes at the adult school to answer any questions students might have about the path to citizenship. 

Hinnenkamp said the USCIS letter provided few details about the memorandum that it references, and there hasn’t been any communication since CAB received the notification. The letter was not a complete surprise to Hinnenkamp and other staff at the Immigration Project, as they were aware that funding cuts were happening at the federal level. 

The nonprofit had applied for the grant three different times, she said, and was finally awarded the funding in October 2023. 

The organization is still figuring out how to navigate this loss in funding, but the worst-case scenario would be laying off some staff, which reduces the number of services it can provide, said Hinnenkamp: “We have to either find another source of funding or potentially reduce staffing.”

The rest of the Immigration Project is funded by the California Department of Social Services, said Hinnenkamp, and it also gets funding from the county and the cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville. Only 25% of Community Action Board’s funding comes from federal grants, said CEO MaríaElena De La Garza. 

Hinnenkamp said CAB and its partners are continuing to provide naturalization services and that the organization’s message to the public is “that we still strongly encourage anybody who’s eligible, anybody who’s a lawful permanent resident, to apply for naturalization, and that we have those services available.”

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