Trump Announces New $1 Billion Pocket Rescission Hitting Migrant Services, DEI Grants, and California Nonprofits

President Donald Trump on Friday announced another pocket rescission of nearly $1 billion in what the White House called “the most harmful government spending,” targeting leftover Biden-era grants for illegal-alien services, race-based business programs, gender-ideology research, and open-borders nonprofits—several of them operating in California, home to the nation’s largest illegal alien population.

The move follows last year’s first pocket rescission in five decades under the Impoundment Control Act. The White House said the latest package continues Trump’s effort to claw back money that “does not benefit American citizens.”

The list reads like a greatest-hits compilation of the same NGO and sanctuary racket the California Globe has documented for years: federal dollars flowing to groups that help illegal aliens stay, sue, and collect services while schools, hospitals, and working families absorb the cost.

Bay Area legal aid and migrant services are on the chopping block. Among the items: $10 million in Department of Homeland Security grants the White House said “aid and abet the entry of aliens.” Recipients included the Immigration Institute of the Bay Area, described as Northern California’s largest nonprofit provider of immigration legal services, and other groups offering legal aid, “restorative learning,” and toolkits instructing people to call ICE watch hotlines.

California runs a statewide sanctuary scam under SB 54 and local ordinances that San Francisco supervisors have proudly reaffirmed. The Globe has long called the resulting network the illegal immigrant industrial complex—NGOs, legal entities, and “welcome” centers paid to process, house, and litigate on behalf of people who entered the country illegally.

The largest single line in the package is $567 million in HHS funds previously used for services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens. The White House named Southwest Key Programs, which faced a Justice Department lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and abuse of unaccompanied minors in its care, and other NGOs whose budgets exploded under Biden.

Another $25 million would come from Education Department Special Programs for Migrant Students, programs the White House said subsidize aliens at the expense of American workers and their children. Past grants funded an LGBT youth summit for “migrant students,” “Therapy for Latinx” workshops, and groups such as Immigrants Rising that ran support circles for “Coping with DACA-Related Stress” and urged aliens to avoid law enforcement.

That federal graft matches Sacramento’s priorities. In June, the Globe reported that lawmakers were pumping another $350 million into the CalNEW “immigrant newcomer” school program even as the state enrolled nearly 237,000 such students, the largest such population in the country, while native-born students fell behind, and Medi-Cal became insolvent when Governor Newsom expanded the taxpayer-funded program to illegal aliens.

Within the pocket recision, HUD would lose $56 million in counseling grants the White House said fund NGOs that “peddle DEI and discriminate based on race.” Named recipients included UnidosUS, formerly the National Council of La Raza, which the Globe has previously described as a facilitator of the border invasion that supports sanctuary policies and amnesty.

The Minority Business Development Agency would lose $10 million. A federal court in 2024 found the agency’s race-based “social disadvantage” presumption unconstitutional. A 2025 audit found 96% of reviewed transactions were duplicates, poorly documented, or should never have been approved. 

HHS’s Office of Minority Health would lose $5 million used for grants framed around racism, “Latinx” and “Sexual Gender Diverse” populations, and “structural racism.” Separate HHS research cuts of $28 million include $500,000 to the University of California to study transgender patient safety and partner with WPATH on a “TRANS-SAFE” certification program.

California’s budget is a case study in related fraud, waste and abuse: hundreds of billions in estimated waste, fraud, and improper payments, unemployment fraud measured in the tens of billions, billons spent on homelessness programs that spend billions while encampments grow faster than results, and a high-speed rail project that has become a national punchline.

The Trump administration has already deferred $1.3 billion in Medicaid funds to California over hospice fraud and launched broader fraud investigations after the president created a national enforcement division. House Republicans have separately moved to bar illegal aliens from welfare and stop states from padding federal formulas with noncitizen counts.

Pocket rescissions give the White House a fast way to claw back funds, though Congress can still fight them. But the White House package is unusually specific: names, dollar amounts, and program purposes that match what California’s political class has spent years defending as compassion. 

Compassion paid for by citizens, delivered by NGOs, and insulated from the voters who foot the bill is not compassion. It is a failing, expensive business model with a long California history: sanctuary statutes dating to Jerry Brown, Biden-era grants that supercharged the migrant-services industry, and a nonprofit network that converted open borders into political power.

The Democrats’ model did not fail by accident. They spent public money, built political power, and left taxpayers with the tab. The White House is done arguing with Sacramento’s talking points. It is dismantling the machine California Democrats used to convert waste, fraud, and abuse into unilateral power.