The executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion were the first warning signs for Liz Roberts, CEO of the victims services organization Safe Horizon. On January 20, President Donald Trump signed a wave of directives aiming to eliminate references to DEI and funding for programs that support these values.

“I think we were immediately concerned that our funding would be at risk because we are deeply committed to providing services in a way that is accessible to all survivors, regardless of race, regardless of immigration status, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation,” Roberts told The 19th. “That has always been our commitment at Safe Horizon, and as a network of providers that has always been core to what we do.”

Safe Horizon, founded in 1978, is one of the largest victim services nonprofits in the United States and had a total budget of $100.5 million for fiscal year 2024. It operates a network of programs across New York City to address the needs of survivors of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault, human trafficking and other crimes. 

The organization has multiple crisis hotlines, helps domestic violence survivors secure temporary housing at shelters, operates a campus sexual assault prevention program, provides mental health counseling sessions, and employs attorneys who represent survivors in court and address legal concerns such as child custody. 

For more than 30 years, Safe Horizon has relied on federal grants as a key source of funding for its work. But now, the Trump administration has blocked nonprofits’ ability to apply for funding. That includes a grant Safe Horizon has received repeatedly since 1995 that goes to support survivors in the Bronx, the borough with the highest rates of domestic violence and intimate partner homicides in New York City. 

Safe Horizon is one of a few victims services groups currently working with the Bronx Criminal Court, but funding for the Bronx program is set to run out in September, if not before. 

Safe Horizon staffers fear other grants could be next.

During the week of Trump’s second inauguration, Roberts and her colleagues watched alongside the rest of the country as federal agencies, from the State Department to the Department of Health and Human Services, issued orders halting new spending that fuels the operations for hundreds of organizations around the world. The Safe Horizon finance team found that the online system they use to submit invoices to be reimbursed for their grant-related expenses was down.

“We had a few days there where we literally thought that funds that we had spent months ago — that we hadn’t yet been reimbursed for — might never be reimbursed,” Roberts said. “We continue to have that concern, honestly. It took quite a while for those systems that we use to invoice to come back up, and for us to be able to kind of go back to anything like normal business.”

On February 6, another blow came when the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women removed information about its funding opportunities and instructed potential grant recipients not to finalize their applications. Since the 1990s, Safe Horizon has received money through the department’s Improving Criminal Justice Responses Program, which is one of about two dozen grant programs authorized by the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and supports efforts to strengthen how governments and courts address gender-based and sexual violence. 

For Safe Horizon, part of that money funds a criminal court program in the Bronx. That program is a collaboration between Safe Horizon, the New York City Department of Probation, the Bronx District Attorney’s office, the Bronx borough president’s office and the New York Legal Assistance Group, according to Maureen Curtis, vice president of Safe Horizon’s criminal justice and court programs.

Each partner in the Bronx program receives a portion of the grant money — $3 million in total distributed over three years. The funds allow Safe Horizon to hire two senior case managers who work with survivors to assess their risk and develop individualized safety plans that can include identifying affordable housing options or navigating the criminal prosecution process.

With the three-year grant period coming to an end on September 30, Safe Horizon’s plan was to renew the funding this year, as it has done for decades prior. Typically in January, government agencies release their “request for proposals,” (RFP) and organizations get about six weeks to respond with a pitch for grant funding, Curtis said.

“We had our first partner meeting, with all the partners who are part of this grant to talk about drafting and submitting a proposal, and the day after our first partner meeting we learned that the RFP was pulled,” meaning they could not reapply for the Bronx grant, Curtis said.

Multiple federal judges have issued temporary orders blocking the funding freezes. However, the application portals for the grant programs dispersed through the Office on Violence Against Women remain inactive. It’s unclear whether the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the grant applications violates the judge’s order because funding for VAWA programs is approved and allocated by Congress, not the White House. The legality of the administration’s attempt to eliminate or curtail programs and departments funded by Congress has been a major point of contention during the first 60 days of Trump’s second term. 

Roberts did not mince words when discussing the value of this program in the Bronx. “It literally saves lives,” she said. The Bronx alone sees tens of thousands of domestic violence cases that are reported to police each year. According to an annual report released by New York Mayor Eric Adams’ office in 2023, the Bronx’s rate of domestic violence homicides was 1.3 per 100,000 residents. The rate of intimate partner homicides was 0.70 per 100,000 residents, which was more than twice the rate of other New York City boroughs, according to the report.

“When somebody has just been assaulted by an intimate partner, and they come into the criminal court following that assault, our advocates are the ones who are there helping them understand all of their options, helping them know how to access orders of protection, shelters, temporary custody of their children, transportation to leave the state — if that’s what they decided safest for them,” Roberts said. “We’re able to coordinate all of that on site at the criminal court, and it prevents delays, and it means the person is emotionally supported at a time of crisis and trauma.”

Safe Horizon told The 19th that these clients include Mary, a 45-year-old Black mother who endured physical and emotional abuse by her husband over the course of their 10-year relationship. Mary never reached out to the police until one particularly bad assault, prompting her to call 911, file a report against her husband, and ultimately connect with the Safe Horizon team through the Bronx Criminal Court. Safe Horizon helped Mary secure emergency shelter and apply for crime victim compensation to address some of her financial needs.

If the DOJ declines to continue funding past September, Safe Horizon will no longer be able to employ the case managers who assist with these types of services.

Though judges have blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze funding more broadly, Safe Horizon is essentially waiting for the other shoe to drop, Roberts said, which could come if the decisions are appealed. Any day, a new decision could lead to the termination of other grants, forcing her team to dedicate extensive time to making contingency plans in the event that any funding disappears. “It’s just a level of uncertainty that is unprecedented,” she said.

Like most nonprofit victims services organizations, Safe Horizon has to hustle to secure funding from a variety of sources: local, state and federal government, as well as individual donors and corporate sponsors. Every source of funding is essential, Roberts said, and federal funding accounts for nearly 30 percent of the organization’s overall budget.

Roberts described the first couple of weeks of Trump’s second term, and the ongoing state of limbo her organization is experiencing, as “traumatic” — a word she doesn’t use lightly.

“What I found in those first few weeks is that I was using all of my crisis intervention skills to stay calm myself so that I could reassure our staff and keep us moving forward,” Roberts said. “The thing about the work we do is that the stakes are so high for our clients. If we aren’t there when somebody needs us, it could literally result in them being badly injured or killed. And if we can’t provide support around safety and healing, we’re leaving somebody alone to struggle.”

Ultimately, Roberts believes that Safe Horizon will come out on the other side of the Trump administration, even if it’s unclear exactly what that will look like. One of the things she is most concerned about, is how these government funding freezes will affect smaller organizations that also provide critical services for survivors and depend more heavily on federal dollars.

“I think we’re going to see nonprofits like that go out of business, and that just damages the safety net profoundly,” Roberts said. “I have never seen anything close to this level of disruption and kind of recklessness, and I’ve been doing work for 40 years.”