This story was first published at Chalkbeat Colorado.
AURORA | The Community College of Aurora will no longer offer citizenship classes after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated a grant that funded the program, the college’s president announced Thursday.
In an interview, CCA President Mordecai Brownlee said he has ended the program, which helped participants prepare for the naturalization test, with a “heavy heart.”
Brownlee said these classes help students realize a path to citizenship and feel more security living in the United States. Students must have a green card to participate in the classes and be able to demonstrate an intermediate level of English proficiency, such as the ability to hold a conversation and write and speak clearly.
File Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
The college is a sub-awardee of the Homeland Security grant that was given to Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountain. Brownlee said the organization notified the school earlier this week about the Trump administration’s decision.
The Trump administration has stepped up immigration enforcement and canceled student visas and green cards, which can serve as pathways to citizenship.
Brownlee said this decision will make it harder for the college to fulfill its mission of serving the Aurora community, which is one of the most diverse in the state. Students turn to the school for a variety of educational opportunities, he said.
“You have individuals now that are beginning to feel a lost sense of value for themselves and their families,” he said. “They saw this pathway as a viable option towards realizing an American Dream.”
As part of the agreement with Lutheran Family Services, the school taught the 10-week citizenship class and, if necessary for the student, offered English-language skills courses. The community college was supposed to receive a total of $101,000 to teach those classes over two years.
Students paid about $30 per class, according to a college spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountain also offered students legal assistance to become citizens, Brownlee said.
The faith-based nonprofit provides various services for families, including adoption, disaster relief, foster care, older adult guardianship, family support, and refugee and immigration services.
It’s unclear if any other Lutheran Family Services programs are affected. A spokeswoman for the organization did not immediately return a call for comment. The Rocky Mountain arm of the organization serves several states, including Colorado, New Mexico, and Montana.
The school has referred students to other area organizations that offer these services.
The Trump administration’s revocation of the grant is part of its widespread cancellation of various federal funding programs. For example, in February, the administration announced billions in funding cuts to health research grants nationwide. That order has especially impacted four-year research institutions, although a federal judge has halted the cuts.
The Trump administration has announced other actions, such as its push to end all race-conscious policies, that could reshape higher education.
Brownlee said he is unsure if the Community College of Aurora could financially support the citizenship classes without the grant. And before he seeks funding, he also wants to get a clearer picture of whether the Trump administration limits pathways to citizenship, given its stance on immigration.
“The last thing that we want to be engaged in is offering classes and preparing people for a test that potentially they can’t even take,” he said. “And so I think we’re really at a standstill.”
Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
This cut makes no sense. Trump campaigned to remove “the worst of the worst,” well, I can think of no one that wants any more criminals here. Heck, especially since we have the criminals from Jan. 6 running free and all the White Nationalist terrorists able to plot their violence!
Seriously, this class was bringing along exactly the type of immigration we want and need! We need our citizens to be informed! The community college I worked for in Houston had a huge citizenship class. The college student population was 55% Hispanic, so many of our students were migrant kids! Almost all worked parttime and many struggled mightily to get through school to get a certificate or degree, but they were incredibly hard-working! This action reveals Trump’s real goal and it’s evil to the core – to intimidate people and deport as many law-abiding migrants as he can.
Absolutely true. But trump doesn’t seem to want people to have a pathway to citizenship, also loves hurting Colorado and especially Aurora, only wants to round up, hurt and deport people in Aurora whether legal or not, always without any due process which is unconstitutional whether you are legal or not, lies about who he is ordering “kidnapped” and shipped out of US (taxpayers paying for it all and astronomically expensive compared to any deportation done ever before in US and helping a corrupt govt in El Salvador that runs a gulag, and basically trump hates any kind of education and tries to gut it – no matter what it is or where. The truth is it’s trump and his MAGA administration along with the MAGA US leaders who should be made to take these citizenship classes as they are all woefully lacking in that information. Ask trump anything on the citizenship test – he will not know it.