CNA Staff, Mar 11, 2025 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
Two more Catholic Charities agencies have announced layoffs in the wake of the Trump administration’s 90-day federal funding freeze.
Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump issued a directive to pause foreign aid for a 90-day review as well as a domestic funding pause designed to prevent federally-funded incentives for illegal immigration.
The directive has led to a freeze on federal funding for Catholic Charities programs across the U.S., most predominately affecting their migrant and refugee service programs.
This week, Catholic Charities in San Diego and Fort Wayne, Indiana, cut employees amid federal funding cuts to migrant resettlement programs, according to news reports.
San Diego
Catholic Charities of San Diego has ceased bringing in asylum-seeking migrants to its Mission Valley Shelter amid funding cuts, according to a local report by NBC. The charity group is laying off more than 70 employees working in its migrant programs, which include a refugee services program and a migrant shelter.
The charity’s CEO, Vino Pajanor, said released employees are being offered other opportunities in the company at programs in the agency that have openings. The company will lay off 42 people in San Diego and 31 in Imperial County at the end of April.
Headquartered less than two dozen miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Catholic Charities of San Diego began operating migrant shelters in April 2021 amid a surge of illegal immigration to the U.S.
Over four years, Catholic Charities of San Diego aided 405,000 migrants from 146 countries. The group received about $9 million of its $46 million budget from the federal government at the peak of the migrant surge, Pajanor told NBC.
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend is letting go of 17 employees following funding cuts, according to a local report. The layoffs followed the federal government’s termination of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
Last year, the Indiana-based agency resettled 380 refugees in northeast Indiana. The agency received $3 million for the refugee service in 2024. The agency’s reception and placement contract was cut this year, one of nearly 10,000 contracts that were cut.
The agency’s CEO, Dan Florin, told a local news service that aid to newly arriving migrants will be on pause “for the foreseeable future.”
In recent weeks, Catholic Charities organizations have laid off staff and shut down programs following the 90-day federal funding freeze.
Local Catholic Charities agencies in Dallas; Syracuse, New York; and Santa Rosa, California, scaled back program operations and laid off employees on account of the freeze. Catholic Charities in Jacksonville, Florida; the panhandle of Texas; and southwest Kansas have also been impacted by the funding freeze.
Soon after the Trump administration paused the funding, Catholic Charities USA urged the administration to reconsider the freeze, citing the “crucial care” the funding helps provide.
Last month, the U.S. bishops sued the Trump administration, arguing the suspension of the funding for refugee programs was unlawful.
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This is hard. On the one hand, I would like to think the bishops, Catholic Charities, and the church are great respecters of laws and understand that there is a great cost to allowing illegal immigration into the US. In the other hand, I know people in leadership at Catholic Charities and many priests are beyond militant in their approach to immigration and demand that we support them in their efforts, or we are not “good Catholics”. The church always kept the government at arms length. Now they push legislation in support of Catholic Social Teaching, and while attacks against the very fabric of the covenant family are ignored, (yes, they really are) instead they went for the billions and “bent the knee to Caesar.” The church will survive with Christ as it’s head as long as you look to Him and Him alone, and change people’s hearts instead of negotiating deals with the Government.
Well said, TW. Many of your points are accurate in my view. Do not, however, be surprised about what a government audit of what the Church did with the billions they received over many years would reveal. Can the Church be trusted? In my view, NO! I place my trust in Christ and Him alone.
A letter has been sent to the Administration in Washington by some prominent Catholics (most notably Janet Smith) requesting that the government look to an accounting by the Church for the billions of dollars awarded to the Church by the government over many, many years. The response of the Church to this request should be very revealing – to say nothing of what an audit by the government would reveal.