By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Despite having half a year to go on its contract for a federal grant that allowed the Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS) to help green card holders to complete their naturalization applications and brush up on their United States history and civics, ACRS learned, along with all other grantees—including others in King County and the City of Seattle—that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated the grant, effective March 27.
“This is a highly competitive grant which we have been awarded every year except one since its inception in 2012, and we have always met or exceeded our performance outcomes,” said Alexandra Olin, ACRS’s director of the Citizenship and Employment Department. “ACRS has made a commitment to continue to offer all programs and services as previously planned for the duration of 2025. We will also be taking other actions in the weeks to come.”
The grant, called the Citizenship Instruction and Naturalization Application Services grant, is meant to fund support for organizations to assist green card holders—officially known as Legal Permanent Residents, or LPRs—in preparing and applying for U.S. citizenship.
ACRS is the state’s largest provider of such assistance.
Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal—an immigrant herself—took to Facebook on March 28 to post about ACRS’s loss of the grant.
“ACRS is vital and this funding must be restored,” she wrote. “This cruel and completely baseless directive will hurt our state and the lives of those eligible for naturalization. It’s clear that Trump wants to eliminate immigrants from this country, even those who are using legal pathways. It’s disgusting and we won’t stand for it.”
ACRS is not the only local organization to lose this funding, said Hamdi Mohamed, the director of Seattle’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (OIRA). Even though the office itself does not receive this grant, OIRA said that other local organizations and community partners do—or did, until March 27. The office did not answer the Northwest Asian Weekly when it asked who the other grantees were.
“This arbitrary cut to key services is a big loss for our community members needing language-specific and free legal representation for citizenship classes to reach the security of U.S. citizenship,” Mohamed said.
Mohamed also said that the office has “also seen the immediate effects of many partner organizations losing federal funding tied to the Unaccompanied Children Program, funds meant to assist unaccompanied migrant children navigating through complex U.S. immigration courts.”
OIRA does not receive federal funding for the New Citizen Program, and provides citizenship support in a variety of ways, Mohamed said. In March, the office announced Rapid Response funding of $240,000 to help support local partners that provide important legal services for immigrants. These services include know your rights training; family safety planning services, in the event of family separation; and legal consultations to help fight against lost protections.
OIRA said that it would announce the partner organizations taking part in this effort later this month.
Beginning this year, OIRA has also held training regarding immigration enforcement protocols and know your rights training for service providers and business owners.