Oklahoma Job Corps Centers get temporary reprieve from federal shutdown order

By Sally Verrando,

OPMX

Published June 9, 2025 at 3:42 AM CDT

Students at Talking Leaves Job Corps Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, on April 5, 2018, learn about electrical wiring. Job Corps Centers offer disadvantaged young adults 16 to 24 a place to live and learn a trade. Students can earn high school diplomas or GEDs while gaining career skills, including construction, culinary arts and security.

Job Corps Centers across the country are scrambling after a district judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration's order to close them. That includes a trio of centers in Oklahoma.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter issued a temporary restraining order to stop the Department of Labor's immediate efforts to close all 99 contract-operated Job Corps Centers.

A hearing is set for June 17.

Oklahoma's three Job Corps Centers are in Tulsa, Guthrie and Tahlequah. They provide residential, educational and vocational training for young people, ages 16 to 24.

"We're excited, but we know that the fight still continues," said Adam Martin, spokesperson for the Tulsa Job Corps Center. "These are real-life people that we're talking about. This is bigger than politics, Democrat and Republican."

The Cherokee Nation runs the Tahlequah center. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement that he was happy for the pause.

"We can focus our efforts back on the education of 150 participants in our 24/7 residential campus in Tahlequah instead of scrambling alongside students and parents to facilitate what was effectively an eviction of low-income students and the termination of their education program," he said.

Disruption interruptus

The National Job Corps Association (NJCA) brought the lawsuit this week on behalf of the centers. An organizational statement said the Department of Labor's decision was based on a flawed report, and the closures are illegal without authorization from Congress.

"The 'transparency report' which was developed by a DOGE staffer examines a year when Department of Labor rules related to the Covid-19 pandemic limited enrollments in order to mistakenly assert that the program has grown too expensive," according to the NJCA statement. "In reality, the budget for Job Corps campus operations has not been increased for 8 years, despite inflation."

COVID-19 tanked enrollment, as it did in schools around the world, but NJCA said in another statement that numbers have been rising since 2021 to almost pre-pandemic levels.

Impact of COVID-19 on Job Corps Average Daily Enrollment and Utilization Rates. "The transparency reports examine years when enrollments and utilization were historically low as result of COVID and associated restrictions implemented by DOL (Department of Labor)," according to the National Jobs Corps Association's Transparency Report Context. "Higher utilization yields more graduates, often at a similar total cost due to economies of scale… Higher utilization rates result in a lower cost-per-graduate."

An NJCA report said the Department prevented centers from accepting new enrollments back in March.

"The first step they took to stop us in our tracks was they stopped the background checks," Martin said. "If we can't do our background checks, we can't take in any students, and we're still fighting."

Chaos interruptus

"This entire thing has upended a lot of people's lives all over the country," said Mai Al-Rajai, Tulsa Job Corps student government president. She said she had friends who were about 90% done with their trade training when they were told about the closure.

Mai Al-Rajai gives a tour at the Tulsa Job Corps Center on April 24, 2025. She was a team leader in building construction technology until the order to close down Job Corps Centers across the nation in May. Adam Martin, spokesperson for the Tulsa center said, "We want to bring them back here so they can finish what they started. We want to make sure that we keep our word, and we want to help them graduate. We want to help them get their trade, and we want to help them be a productive member of our society."

"That was just so surreal for me because (her friend) just looked so defeated," she said. "He was crying. I felt so helpless because he was one of the hardest-working people I know at Job Corps. And to see all of his resolve to be taken from him like that in an instant, it's still very traumatizing to think back on that moment."

Martin described another student who was on the verge of graduation and ready to join the Navy. The young man told him he felt the ground had been pulled out from under him.

Martin said even though all 50 youths from Tulsa's residential center have been rehoused, their education has been stopped.

"Let's be honest. These kids aren't going to places that they want to go," he said. "These are just places we had to get them into that had beds for them, because we had to get them off our campus.

"Many students that were depending on us have left and they're probably not going to return," he said. "But we're hoping we can get them back."

This is not a full resolution, though.

"We know that this is good news moving forward," Martin said. "But we still need the general public to continue to voice their support. We're going to continue to push the message that these young adults come first before politics."

This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.