The Trump administration’s expanded ban on immigrants’ access to social services, such as Head Start and Meals on Wheels, could have a “devastating” impact on children of immigrants, including U.S. citizens, hundreds of opponents told the federal government Wednesday.
A total of 372 organizations have coalesced to oppose the administration’s decision to make more federally funded health and human service programs off-limits to immigrants with some form of permission to be in the country.
The groups say the administration wrongly promotes the expanded restrictions as part of its efforts to target illegal immigration. The policy actually “directly targets lawfully present immigrants” by turning early learning centers, community health centers and mental health and addiction treatment programs “into immigration checkpoints” where providers would have to check a person’s immigration status, according to the groups.
“Undocumented immigrants already are not eligible for most federally funded programs. This is another case where the administration is lying to the public,” said Adriana Cadena, director of the Protecting Immigration Families coalition, which led the organizations’ opposition to restrictions to be implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
As a result, the restrictions will harm millions, the groups stated in official comments filed in response to the administration’s expanded restrictions, published in the Federal Register July 14.
The deadline for public comment on the new restrictions was set for 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
One in 4 children in the U.S. are in a family with at least one immigrant parent. In 2023, 86% of those children were born in the U.S., making them U.S. citizens, according to Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank. (President Donald Trump also wants to change such birthright citizenship.)
Even if a U.S. citizen child is entitled to use a program, the Trump administration’s restrictions are likely to cause confusion and misunderstanding, Cadena said, because of the many children who are in families whose members have different types of immigration status.
“This is going to have long-term consequences we cannot begin to grasp,” she said.
In response to an NBC News request for comment, the White House sent a link to a July 10 news release by HHS announcing the new restrictions. The administration said in the release that it was ensuring that public benefits were not “diverted to subsidize illegal aliens.”
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stated in the July 10 release. “Today’s action changes that — it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”
Expanding the programs restricted to ‘qualified’ immigrants
The 1996 Personal Responsibility Reconciliation Act restricted the eligibility for federal public benefits to certain “qualified” immigrants, according to KFF, a health policy group.
Qualified immigrants have been defined as those lawfully present in the U.S. and do not include people with Temporary Protected Status, those who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and others, KFF reported.
The HHS has added 13 more programs to the list of programs open only to qualified immigrants.
Those newly added by the administration include Head Start, some of the funding for community health centers, family planning services, child welfare prevention, kinship guardian assistance, substance abuse prevention, treatment and recovery and mental health services and the Community Services Block Grant, the groups said. The federal government has said the list is not comprehensive and more programs could be added later.
The groups argue that the programs and immigrants’ access to them have a larger benefit to society as a whole and that “reducing access to these vital programs will make all of our communities less healthy, less safe, less stable, less able to thrive.”
Restrictions on the HHS programs announced in July were to be effective immediately. Groups said little guidance has been given to providers regarding their implementation, creating confusion and having a chilling effect on people who are eligible for the programs and benefits as well as on the nonprofits, local governments and others who provide them.
Several states have sued over the changes, which they said would also affect programs such as Meals on Wheels, domestic violence shelters, housing assistance and more. A lawsuit also was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others on behalf of parent groups challenging Trump’s policies on Head Start.
The administration provided a 30-day comment period for the new restrictions.
“We do not necessarily expect that there is a real interest from the administration to seek comment on public policy that will impact millions of people,” Cadena said.
“This is all about the Trump administration’s governmentwide attack on immigrant families, and to dismantle the safety net system that many Americans rely on,” she said.
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