Editor’s note: This is the second story in a collaborative series covering the state of Northwest college admissions in 2025. It was reported by KUOW and NWPB through the Northwest News Network public media partnership. The first story in the series published on Nov. 3.
A federal program that helps young people from migrant families attend college abruptly halted this year after the Trump administration eliminated funding for migrant education.
The College Access Migrant Program gave five-year grants to schools including Washington State University, Oregon State University and Boise State University. The University of Washington used the funds to send recruiters to agricultural communities across the state, including Connell High School, north of Pasco. That’s where Xitlaly Mendoza, whose parents are migrant farmworkers from Mexico, learned about the program.
Mendoza said her parents wouldn’t work in apple orchards if they’d been able to finish school and go on to college. “If my mom would have been able to finish her education, she would have definitely been an elementary teacher. That's what she dreamed of. And then my dad, his biggest dream was becoming an architect or an engineer,” Mendoza said. Her parents pushed Mendoza and her two brothers to study hard so they could have those kinds of opportunities.
Mendoza prided herself in her grades. But she hadn’t thought much about life after high school until a teacher encouraged her to consider the University of Washington. It felt like a long shot — it’s selective, and she didn’t know anyone who’d gone to school so far from home.
“I remember just thinking, like, Oh my gosh,” Mendoza said. “Like, wait, is that… Is that too crazy, though?”
Then a recruiter from the UW’s College Access Migrant Program — or CAMP — gave a presentation at her school.
“Just the mere fact of looking at her and knowing that, A, she was from Prosser, which wasn't too far away from where we were, and B, she was a Latina and who had also graduated UW, I immediately felt connected to her,” Mendoza said.
It was daunting to be the first one in her family to go to college, with no one to turn to for help with financial aid applications and paperwork. “So for her to say, yeah, that's everything that we help you with, that's what really sold me,” Mendoza said.
Migrant students who got accepted to the UW and the CAMP program got a lot of support in their first year, like a weekly seminar to help them acclimate to college, and to life in the big city.
In Eastmont School District in East Wenatchee, college counselor Paula Ortiz said she saw the benefits of CAMP in local high schools. She said recruiters made students and their families more confident about going away to school — knowing they’d have mentors and peers with similar backgrounds.
“They’re geared towards supporting these students academically and emotionally, right? Having kind of a home away from home.”
CAMP also provided financial support that can be critical for students from families where income can be seasonal. “What they’re designed for is to retain these kids and make sure that they finish their first year of college and continue on,” Ortiz said.
The U.S. Department of Education has found that students who take part in CAMP are far more likely to stay in school. But the Trump administration has questioned the effectiveness of migrant education programs and called them “extremely costly.” This summer it cut funding for migrant students, including CAMP grants.
Andres Huante, an interim director at the UW’s Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, led its CAMP program, which served 50 or more first-year students annually.
Huante says even after migrant students are accepted to the UW, they often doubt themselves. “It’s helping them understand you deserve this. You earned it. You went through the process and the university admissions decided you’d be a successful student here,” Huante said.
Micheal Perez, who grew up in the Yakima Valley and was in the 2018 cohort of UW CAMP, said it was a cultural shock to move to Seattle, and he might not have finished college without the financial and moral support from the program. “They gave that foundational piece that I needed in order for me to be able to access higher education,” Perez said. “They gave me that bridge.”
Perez, who is now preparing to apply for medical school, said he was shocked to learn that CAMP had lost its federal funding. “If we burn that bridge down, then people don’t have the access that they need, so we’re just continuing the cycle of poverty,” Perez said.
Xitlaly Mendoza says CAMP is the reason she applied to the UW. She won a Presidential Scholarship and is now a senior, looking at graduate schools for public policy. To her, getting rid of CAMP is bad public policy.
“How is me learning more about class registration, financial aid and job opportunities a harm to you or anyone else?” Mendoza said.
Although CAMP is gone for now, Mendoza said, she will still volunteer to translate for Spanish-speaking parents on campus tours, just as CAMP staff did for her family.
She wants students like her to know that the University of Washington is for them, too.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.