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Washington — The Justice Department is preparing to solicit applications for up to $3.5 cardinal successful grants to wage for mostly immigration-related instrumentality enforcement programs, instrumentality and personnel, aggregate sources acquainted with the plans told CBS News.
The assistance solicitations, astir of which are not yet public, volition money everything from the operation of migration detention facilities and the acquisition of constabulary surveillance instrumentality to the hiring of instrumentality enforcement personnel.
Some of the wealth is besides expected to beryllium utilized to let the Justice Department to wage section prosecutors to service arsenic impermanent peculiar adjunct U.S. attorneys to enactment the department's caller National Fraud Enforcement Division, which is tasked with investigating fraud involving nationalist benefits, the sources said.
The $300 cardinal solicitation to money section prosecutors who volition assistance analyse fraud committed by radical surviving successful the state illegally was posted connected Tuesday evening, aft CBS News sought remark astir the caller grants.
The flurry of anticipated caller grants comes arsenic victims services organizations, transgression justness probe facilities and juvenile justness programs person been struggling to enactment afloat, owed to a operation of unprecedented delays and terminations to different DOJ assistance programs — galore of which are authorized and appropriated by Congress.
The Justice Department is besides simultaneously taking distant millions of dollars from grants that money everything from victims services and hatred transgression prevention to substance maltreatment programs, and transferring the wealth to money different non-grant activities, sources with nonstop cognition of the plans told CBS News.
"Terminations and delays successful backing are virtually sidesplitting programs," said Claire Selib, enforcement manager of the National Organization for Victim Advocacy. The nonprofit is facing aggregate backing problems aft the Justice Department canceled 1 assistance past year. Three others the radical applied for person been stalled for six months.
"Programs are shutting down. They're scaling back. Staff are being laid off," Selib said.
A Justice Department authoritative said the DOJ is moving to guarantee that "all taxpayer-funded assistance wealth is appropriately supporting initiatives to Make America Safe Again, and each discretionary funds not aligned with this ngo are taxable to reappraisal and reallocation."
"The archetypal measurement successful this process was terminating grants that were not straight supporting instrumentality enforcement efforts to amended nationalist safety. All assistance wealth and programs are being utilized accordant with parameters acceptable by Congress, and the Department volition proceed to reappraisal appeals and grant funds to organizations aligned with Administration goals," the authoritative added.
"We are already being dismantled"
The Justice Department's assistance programs person been successful disarray since President Trump took office.
On April 22, 2025, the DOJ terminated much than 350 grants awarded during President Joe Biden's tenure that funded everything from constabulary departments and section prosecutors to groups that supply services to victims of crime.
The section gave the grantees 30 days to appeal. Wednesday marks the one-year day since the cuts. Some groups are inactive waiting for a effect to their appeal, portion others lone precocious learned they were denied.
The backing uncertainty has lone been made worse by delays successful getting assistance funds retired the door. Many property the delays to a drastic alteration successful DOJ staffing and an enforcement bid requiring further layers of reappraisal by governmental officials earlier grants tin beryllium solicited and awarded.
More than an full fiscal twelvemonth came and went without the Office of Justice Programs soliciting applications for galore of its congressionally mandated backing opportunities.
For instance, the bureau did not commencement soliciting fiscal 2025 applications for its fashionable Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, oregon JAG, which is utilized to assistance money section constabulary departments, until March 13, 2026.
The National Institute of Justice, which funds transgression justness probe projects, has lone solicited 3 grants since Mr. Trump took office.
Grants focused connected assisting victims of quality trafficking successful fiscal twelvemonth 2025 were lone solicited successful December and person yet to beryllium awarded.
"They're neglecting their regular responsibilities," said Liz Ryan, who antecedently ran the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a DOJ grant-making bureau that funds programs to amended the younker justness system.
Meanwhile, grantees that person applied for funds inactive don't cognize if they volition beryllium selected, complicating their budgets.
Bill McKinney runs the New Kensington Community Development Corporation successful the opioid epidemic-plagued Philadelphia vicinity of Kensington. He told CBS News that the Justice Department canceled the group's $1.5 cardinal assistance past year, and has yet to respond to 2 different assistance applications the radical submitted successful August and October 2025.
"We are already astatine risk, and we are already being dismantled," helium said.
The canceled assistance funded its CURE Violence program, a nationalist health-based antiviolence inaugural that utilizes mediators with lived acquisition connected the streets who enactment to deescalate violence.
A fewer weeks ago, the DOJ yet told the radical its entreaty was denied, and the programme is expected to adjacent by October.
"It is terrible, and it doesn't marque immoderate sense," McKinney said.
The delays successful backing besides travel astatine a clip erstwhile determination is little wealth disposable to distribute.
Although Congress has allotted increases of 95% to the DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services, oregon COPS, assistance bureau and 11% to the Office of Justice Programs, it chopped backing elsewhere successful the department.
To screen shortfalls to migration courts, prisons and litigating offices, earlier this twelvemonth the DOJ approved a $75 cardinal transportation retired of its assistance offices, and notified Congress successful March it could transportation up to an further $95.8 cardinal much by year's extremity if necessary, sources acquainted with the substance told CBS News.
To date, it has targeted $117 cardinal it intends to transportation retired of a wide assortment of grants that assistance the victims of trafficking, combat hatred crimes, trim backlogs for intersexual battle kits of rape victims, enactment efforts to assistance missing and exploited children and money cause addiction and intelligence wellness assistance programs, according to goverment documents reviewed by CBS News.
Those transfers are taking spot adjacent aft Congress imposed caller limits connected however overmuch assistance wealth the DOJ could dip into for non-grant activities. Last year, the section utilized assistance wealth to wage for things specified arsenic President Trump's crackdown connected transgression successful Washington, D.C., according to an investigation from a soon-to-be-released study by the Council connected Criminal Justice.
To code the backing gaps, the Justice Department is relying connected respective different assistance resources — chiefly a $3.5 cardinal cookware of wealth from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to reimburse states and instrumentality enforcement for immigration-related activities incurred betwixt 2021 and 2028.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act besides allocated immoderate funds for COPS and Byrne JAG grants, successful summation to the regular fiscal twelvemonth 2026 legislature appropriation.
Those caller resources for Byrne JAG and COPS grants, however, spot immoderate limits connected however the funds tin beryllium used. The grants cannot beryllium utilized to money unit prevention and simplification programs and immoderate section instrumentality enforcement bureau who accepts the wealth indispensable hold to cooperate with national migration authorities.
Most of the applicable backing from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is geared towards instrumentality enforcement agencies. As such, the immense bulk of that wealth cannot beryllium utilized to enactment galore of the DOJ's different congressionally authorized assistance programs — specified arsenic those for victims services.
"What concerns maine is if they are trying to rotation retired much backing for instrumentality enforcement to analyse and prosecute, without rolling retired the backing for the services needed by the survivors," said Jean Bruggeman, co-executive manager astatine Freedom Network USA.
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