President Trump moved to cancel $810 million Congress approved for refugee aid, migrant education and diversity programs, a pocket rescission critics say undercuts the power of the purse.
The White House announced late Friday that it would rescind $810 million in appropriated funds through a pocket rescission filed days before the fiscal year closes on Sept. 30, the Daily Caller reported.
Officials said the money is no longer needed because illegal crossings have fallen sharply under Trump’s border policies, and they labeled the spending wasteful and harmful to taxpayers. The largest single cut hits Health and Human Services accounts that funded nonprofits serving refugees and asylees.
The request lands while the House remains out of session through the November election, leaving little time for lawmakers to force a vote before the funds lapse.
The package targets refugee aid, migrant education and diversity programs across multiple agencies. The biggest slice is $567 million from HHS social-service accounts tied to nonprofits that serve refugees and asylees.
Other reductions include $70 million for programs the White House branded “Woke International Education,” $56 million in Housing and Urban Development counseling grants, and $25 million for migrant student education.
The New York Post reported that Trump proposed 11 rescissions totaling $810 million affecting Commerce, Education, HHS, Homeland Security, HUD, Justice and International Assistance Programs. In a notice to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump wrote that he was reporting the rescissions “in accordance with... the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.”
Among groups losing support is Southwest Key Programs, which received $40 million. The White House noted the organization faced a Justice Department suit alleging its staff sexually harassed and abused unaccompanied minors. Global Refuge, an immigration nonprofit led by a former policy director for Michelle Obama, is also among those affected.
Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, rebuked the cuts on X on Sept. 25. She said lawmakers received no warning or consultation.
Collins stated:
"Without warning or consultation, Congress just received an $810 million package of pocket rescissions from the Administration. This is the most recent attempt by this Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse."
Collins also pointed to Government Accountability Office findings that pocket rescissions violate the Impoundment Control Act. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, accused the administration of stealing money owed to communities.
OMB Director Russ Vought has maintained that the Impoundment Control Act does not bar a president from canceling funds late in the fiscal year. Pocket rescissions work by filing the request so close to the fiscal year’s end that the money lapses before Congress can act.
Trump used the same maneuver in 2025 to withhold $4.9 billion in foreign aid, the first pocket rescission in nearly five decades. The Supreme Court let that cancellation stand while declining to rule on its legality.
Collins and other critics call the latest package a clear end-run. The White House frames it as basic housekeeping: stop sending tax dollars to programs that no longer match border realities and that officials call wasteful.
With the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and the House away through the election, the practical effect is straightforward. The $810 million does not get spent. Refugee-service nonprofits, migrant-education accounts and the diversity-branded international education lines lose the money Congress had written into law.
That is the point of the timing. File late enough and the calendar does the work. Supporters of the cuts see unspent balances that outlived the crisis they were meant to address. Opponents see a president seizing the purse strings one line item at a time.
Either way, the dollars are headed off the books unless Congress finds a way to stop it in the final days of the fiscal year.
Taxpayers should not keep funding yesterday’s migrant bureaucracy after the border numbers have changed. Congress wrote the checks; the White House is finally canceling the ones that no longer make sense.
