Trump administration wants to defund watchdog groups for Navajo mental health

Benita McKerry’s job at the Native American Disability Law Center mostly involves driving to far-off parts of the Navajo Nation, an area larger than the size of West Virginia, and checking in on the reservation’s group homes and facilities for people with disabilities. The Diné woman rarely listens to music or podcasts on these drives, instead soaking up the miles by reflecting on the countless kids and adults she’s come to know. 

She recounts her charges easily. A 63-year-old woman whose face lights up whenever McKerry visits. Eight men gathered around the box of donuts she brought. A 32-year-old woman in a wheelchair who has a mild intellectual disability, who often tells her, “I want to get out of this facility. I want to work. I want to get my own place.”

McKerry has cultivated these relationships and overseen the care of thousands of disabled people over the last decade. But her work is in jeopardy. When the Trump administration first released a budget proposal for a new agency focusing on chronic disease, it reduced funding of protection and advocacy programs for individuals with mental illness, or PAIMI, from $40 million in 2024 to $14 million in 2026. The number of people served by the PAIMI program would plummet from 8,600 to 4,000, according to the budget proposal’s estimation.

“If we lost the PAIMI program, we would have to significantly curtail services. I can’t find a way to keep everybody we currently have, including myself,” said Therese Yanan, the center’s executive director, who has done disability rights work in the Navajo Nation since 1994.

The center losing funding would be another blow to American Indian health in recent months, despite health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insistence that he will ensure adequate care for these populations. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee rebuked the administration’s proposals, releasing a new federal health budget that bumped PAIMI funding back up to 2024 levels, among other changes. The final funding situation won’t be sorted out until the House returns in September.

“Funding uncertainty creates many complications for [protection and advocacy programs],” said Cory Bernstein, staff attorney at the National Disability Rights Network, which oversees these programs. The organizations “are still receiving intake calls and know that the disability community needs our services. But taking on new advocacy efforts becomes a lot harder when P&As are not certain they will have the resources to see them through.”

While protection and advocacy programs are important in every state, they play a unique and important role for Native communities in the Four Corners region that includes Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Members of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe here often live in remote areas and are unable to find service providers. Tribal and state laws often intersect in strange, internecine ways, and as people with disabilities are shuttled back and forth between facilities in different nations, the responsibility for their care changes. 

Yanan recounted the dizzying story of a man who was a resident of a private group home in the Navajo Nation. After falling ill, he was sent to an Indian Health Services hospital. He later ended up in a Phoenix hospital, where doctors determined that he had been abused at some point. The hospital informed Arizona adult protective services about the mistreatment, before sending him back to the Navajo Nation and informing its protective services. 

Who has jurisdiction to follow up on his care? It’s complicated, Yanan fretted over the phone. Her center tries to wrangle all of the players to ensure people aren’t lost in the shuffle. “These are some of the really unique legal issues facing Native Americans with disabilities. On a national level, people may say, it’s a relatively small proportion of the overall population,” said Yanan, who is not Native. “But it doesn’t really matter if it’s just one person, right? Everybody has a right to be treated with respect.”

Though the center is a trusted figure for many Navajo people after more than two decades of work, staff members at schools, group homes, and correctional facilities still hesitate to share information with its staff. And even if a facility shares information on a resident, it can be hard to get them the services they need. If you are part of the Navajo Nation and on the reservation and want to report an instance of abuse or neglect to protective services, there is a toll-free number, but there is no protocol to match the person in need with a case manager, said McKerry.

McKerry is not just a watchdog. She’s also a vital — and often, the only — link that many people in group homes have to the broader Navajo community. Many of the center’s employees function as both cultural connective tissue and authority figures, whether in facilities or even, as one employee found, in schools.

When a Navajo student named Taylor entered seventh grade, her classmates started bullying her on social media and in person. They tripped her, pulled her hair, and blamed it on her visual impairment. The K-pop-loving teen started lashing out and getting into fights; school officials threatened to expel her. Desperate to keep her in school, one of Taylor’s therapists told her grandmother, Donna, to contact the disability law center as a last resort. 

“When I came over here, I thought it was just gonna be white people. But when I walked in and I saw these Native faces, I said, ‘Oh good, I’m home,’” said Donna, who asked for anonymity for herself and her granddaughter to avoid retaliation for speaking out against the bullying.

One of the center’s employees joined Donna for her next meeting with school officials, and reminded them that Taylor had rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The expulsion threats ceased, and Taylor started getting more treatment for her anxiety and depression. One of the few Native kids in a predominantly white school in northwestern New Mexico, Taylor lost both of her parents just before the pandemic.

“That’s what we bring to the table,” said Yanan. “Being part of the community, being in the community, having our staff represent the community.” 

Though it’s unclear where the Senate and the House will land on funding levels for protection and advocacy programs, the importance of the center’s work for kids like Taylor and the many other Native people with disabilities — 40,000, by the Navajo Nation Advisory Council on Disabilities’ estimation — is clear. McKerry sees it every time she opens her car door, starts the engine, and heads down the road.

“I get onto the reservation, I see farmlands, hogans,” said McKerry, referring to the traditional dwelling for Navajo people. “I see fields. And I’m thankful that I’m in a position where I’m going to a location to be able to help another individual. I let them know that they can always reach out to me.”

STAT’s coverage of disability issues is supported by grants from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Commonwealth Fund. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.