A simmering clash on immigration between the governor of Texas and Austin’s newly elected sheriff has left local leaders scrambling to restore sweeping funding cuts enacted by the state’s conservative leader.

In an extraordinary move, Democrats and officials in Travis County, which includes Austin, are now asking the public to help raise $1.5 million. That’s the amount in state criminal justice grants slashed by Governor Greg Abbott last week. Abbott, a Republican, yanked the funds slated for the staunchly liberal county after Sheriff Sally Hernandez moved to limit her department’s cooperation with federal immigration officials over deportations.

More than 1,500 donors have already raised over $100,000 in the five days since the crowdfunding campaign started. But that’s merely a fraction of the money needed to fund the programs for veterans, families, and those struggling with drug addiction that officials say are now imperiled.

“It feels like one of those moments in time that our kids or grandkids will ask, ‘What did you do when all of this happened?'” Eddie Rodriguez, a Democratic State Representative from Austin who started the fundraising initiative, told Vocativ in an interview. “People don’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore.”

The governor’s harsh reproach, and the dramatic response by Travis County and its people, offer a glimpse of the turbulent, high stakes battles ahead over so-called sanctuary city policies, an issue now at the center of President Donald Trump’s proposed immigration crack down.

As a candidate, Trump declared he would strip federal funding from local governments that refuse to work with federal agents to arrest and detain undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He signed an executive order to that effect five days into his presidency, though it’s unclear how much money his administration can withhold from jurisdictions.

Facing Trump’s fiscal threats, as well as his pledge to immediately banish up to three million people from America’s borders, dozens of liberal-leaning cities and counties have declared themselves immigrant sanctuaries and said they will not aid federal law enforcement dispatched to deport residents. Hernandez’s announcement that Travis County would defy Trump’s orders received searing criticism from Abbott, a close supporter of the new president, who vowed immediate retaliation.

Calling the sheriff’s decision “a dangerous game of political Russian roulette — with the lives of Texans at stake,” the governor quickly pulled more than a dozen grants earmarked for social service programs in Travis County last week, state records show. Among them are a court program for veterans suffering from mental health disorders who wind up on the wrong side of the law, treatment for abused and traumatized children, and special courts for family drug recovery and domestic violence. None of grants, however, are for programs overseen directly by the sheriff’s office.

“The programs that would be affected by these cuts are both civil and criminal, have nothing to do with immigration and none of them, to date, are under the managerial control of the sheriff,” Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt told the Texas Observer.

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment by Vocativ.

Spurred by what he said was a growing outcry among people in Austin over the program cuts, Rodriguez and other officials launched the Travis County #StrongerTogether initiative on Friday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had raised $100,644 from 1,563 individual contributors, organizers said. Donations, which are overseen by the Austin Community Foundation, a civic non-profit, are also tax-deductible.

Other crowdfunding campaigns aimed at drumming up funds for Travis County have also emerged online. Carlos Quintanilla, an activist from Garland, about 200 miles north of Austin, started a GoFundMe initiative geared toward immigrants and their families on on Sunday. “To counter Abbott’s policies and threats, we will act with intelligence and use the greatest power we have, the economic power of our community,” Quintanilla wrote in Spanish. “As immigrants or children of immigrants we will replace [funding cuts] with our small contribution of 10 dollars that will be used exclusively to support the concept of sanctuaries.”

In less than 48 hours, it’s received roughly $6,500 from 380 contributors.