OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — More Oklahomans are being affected by federal cuts.

Palomar: Oklahoma City’s Family Justice Center serves those who are fleeing domestic abuse, human trafficking, sexual assault or criminal violence.

The center partners with other community agencies to provide wraparound services to victims.

Each year, Palomar serves around 6,000 victims, but now federal cuts are threatening its services.

“The bottom line is our programming is vital to Oklahoma City and families and it cannot stop and it cannot be interrupted or people will die,” said Kim Garrett-Funk, chief visionary officer and founder of Palomar.

Palomar found out this week that four full-time employees they had through AmeriCorps were let go immediately.

“Some of them work in our children’s sanctuary, so they provide trauma informed care for kids who come in from violent environments that need a lot of care and a sensitive training and support,” said Garrett-Funk.

Last year alone, the children’s sanctuary helped nearly 2,000 kids.

“As we go into the summer, our rates of children coming in for services will only increase, while our staffing is forced to decrease because of these federal cuts,” said Garrett-Funk.

The AmeriCorps workers were also vital to Palomar’s Shop for victims.

“When families flee, they literally have nothing, but the clothes on their back and now we don’t have anybody to run that program for helping with clothes and distributing diapers and formula to families who are most vulnerable,” said Garrett-Funk.

Garrett-Funk says the U.S. Department of Justice also stripped them of a $500,000 grant through the Office of Victims of Crime.

“Funded direct services for adults and our case management, so long term support services as people rebuild from chronic trauma, those services have been defunded by the federal government,” said Garrett-Funk.

Between both cuts, Garrett-Funk says they’ve lost funding for a third of their staff.“Can you imagine waking up and like your network being defunded a third and what’s heartbreaking is how it’s being done, people are just getting blindsided by emails telling them they’re terminated,” said Garrett-Funk.

The reason for these cuts is because the Trump administration has different priorities.

“The cut is shocking and we are appealing it. We appealed it two days later because many of the things we do aligns with the administration’s priorities to help hurting children in America,” said Garrett-Funk.

In the meantime, Palomar is asking the community to support them to bridge the gap in federal funding and they’re also exploring different ways to generate revenue for operations.