The team is already down more than a dozen people. Soon it might be gone.

As the administration of President Donald Trump pursues a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the agency’s environmental justice division, including in the Mid-Atlantic office, already has faced cuts — and things could get worse.

Last week, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin laid out plans, in a memo reviewed by The Baltimore Banner, to eradicate all environmental justice offices.

Such measures could mean less support for low-income communities in Baltimore like Middle East, east of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Curtis Bay, the industrialized neighborhood wrestling with the consequences of pollution for its residents.

The team in the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic office, located in Philadelphia, tasked with overseeing programs and grants for neighborhoods like these is relatively small: about 35 people before Trump took office, or a fraction of the regional office’s roughly 800 employees.

But in interviews, several Mid-Atlantic office employees described how funding cuts and suppressed communications have curtailed environmental justice efforts. The employees spoke with The Banner anonymously for fear of retaliation.

The division has taken heavy losses, according to two regionalemployees: 11 people were placed on “administrative leave,” two retired and four detailed from other divisions left the team. A handful of those placed on leave were brought back earlier this month.

At the same time, the future of millions of dollars in grants for disadvantaged communities across the region is, at best, uncertain.

The status of grants can change from one day to the next across the EPA, and tracking by the Annapolis-based Choose Clean Water Coalition has identified four environmental justice programs that have been terminated.

The result has been widespread confusion — both for EPA staff and the communities they support.

“Creating chaos at these agencies seems to be not a bug but a feature,” said Bradley Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation and former administrator of the Mid-Atlantic office, which covers Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Draconian” cuts planned by the administration would devastate the entire agency, Campbell said. But, he added, the Trump team seems fixated on programs benefiting historically disadvantaged communities.

“There is a particular and vindictive focus on anything that would address marginalized communities that have borne the brunt of pollution for most of our history,” he said.

Eradicating the EPA’s environmental justice divisions across its 10 regional offices and in Washington is part of a goal, outlined by Trump and Zeldin, to slash agency spending by 65%. It was also spelled out in Project 2025, the Republican transition blueprint repeatedly disavowed by Trump’s campaign before the election.

According to a statement from the EPA press office, without a spokesperson’s name attached, the agency has brought back “approximately 419″ employees nationwide in recent days, most of whom remain on administrative leave — a response to a Maryland judge’s March 13 court order.

The statement didn’t address the agency’s targeting of environmental justice work and declined to answer questions about the status of grants, citing litigation.

“EPA is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organization improvements,” the statement said. “We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water and land for all Americans.”

Though the EPA’s definition of environmental justice encompasses all racial groups, Trump has targeted it alongside “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” — a link Zeldin made in his memo outlining plans to eliminate environmental justice offices.

“With this action, EPA is delivering organization improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Zeldin wrote in the memo.

Among the funding cuts to environmental justice work is a five-year, $12 million program that has helped disadvantaged communities in the mid-Atlantic apply for federal support, including through a partnership with the South Baltimore Community Land Trust.

Sacoby Wilson, director of the University of Maryland’s Health, Environmental, and Economic Justice Lab, serves as co-director for that initiative and estimated the coalition spent $3 or $4 million before the grant was cancelled.

A longtime advocate for clean air and water in low-income communities, Wilson expressed confidence that advocates will outlast these tactics.

“We’re used to not getting funded. This is not new,” he said. “The movement is not going to go away in our region.”

The EPA’s environmental justice efforts date back to the 1990s but grew substantially in resources and manpower under former President Joe Biden.

Under Biden, the EPA was in a “golden era,” one member of the Region 3 environmental justice team said, championing justice for polluted and historically overlooked communities like never before.

Shortly after Trump took office, the employee was identified as having at least half of their portfolio devoted to environmental justice and placed on administrative leave.

“People in my division are just very, very stressed and just concerned about what the next day is going to bring them,” said the employee. “Fear and anxiety has been the point of a lot of this.”

Adam Ortiz, the administrator for the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic region under Biden, said it’s difficult to understand the Trump administration’s motivations, but he called their retreat from environmental justice work a clear “withdrawal from the patients in the waiting room that need the most care.”

Campbell, who led the Mid-Atlantic office under Bill Clinton’s presidency, remains in touch with regional EPA offices and spoke similarly about a culture of fear among current employees.

He takes the Trump administration at its word that it will pursue cutting the agency by 65%. Even if they don’t succeed, Campbell questioned why any talented environmental scientist or attorney would take a job at the agency under the current conditions.

Among the changes at the Mid-Atlantic office, the environmental justice team’s contacts with communities and grantees were significantly curtailed, often restricted to boilerplate updates on funding status or recent court orders, according to the environmental justice employee who remains on leave. For communities without formal grants, communication was broken off, ending relationships staff had worked to build.

Staff across the regional office also face more difficulty traveling for their jobs — whether or not it comes with any expenses, according to a different Mid-Atlantic office employee. Environmental staff can’t attend conferences to learn from their peers or visit the polluted communities they are hired to help, even if they’re just a few miles away.

After Trump’s election in November, Ortiz and other EPA staff visited Baltimore to meet with community members in Middle East.

At the time, Ortiz expressed optimism about the future of his office, arguing that efforts to dismantle it would be easier said than done.

Those predictions were grounded in the “rule of law,” the former Mid-Atlantic administrator said this week. That the courts are pushing back on Trump’s overreach is a positive sign, he said.

“There’s no question that this is a circus that is chaotic and cruel to the people involved,” Ortiz said. “But hopefully in the not too distant future we can recover and get back to work.”