Fed Strips Eligibility For Head Start & Health Programs From Undocumented Immigrants

This week, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education (ED), Agriculture (USDA), Justice (DoJ), and Labor (DoL) sent notice that the federal government will be curbing what they deem as “benefits” for “illegal aliens,” including public health programs that receive certain government grants, career and technical education programs, and Head Start, the 60-year-old kindergarten readiness program that has already found itself embattled under the Trump administration.

The move comes as a result of the administration’s interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 or PRWORA, a Clinton-era law that dramatically reduced eligibility for federal welfare programs. In 1998, courts ruled PRWORA applied to federal benefits — such as SNAP and Medicaid — but not necessarily all programs that benefited from government funding. For example, a health clinic that received a community services block grant (CSBG) was not obligated to withhold treating someone based on immigration status. Now, the Fed says the definition of “benefits” has expanded, based on a February executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.”

“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said HHS secretary Robert Kennedy in a statement. “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.”

But multiple aspects of this new rule remain uncertain. To begin, in the case of a program like Head Start, it is unclear how many undocumented children benefit from the program to begin with. Most undocumented adult’s children are American citizens. The Washington Post reports experts believe this move will present modest changes to the program as it currently operates. They go on to posit that this is perhaps a way for the administration to test the waters or set precedent against undocumented children attending public schools.

Another question is how this rule would be implemented for something like a community health center. How will they determine citizenship in practice? Casually checking immigration status is usually not simple or straightforward (as mistaken ICE arrests have shown). How will the health departments that generally issue government grants determine whether they have treated undocumented patients? Moreover, if implementation as written were to happen, how will localities deal with the fallout? Immigrant communities often rely on community clinics as they do not have access to benefits like Medicaid and, as such, could be hit particularly hard.

It is also somewhat curious that some departments to make announcements did not actually change policy at all, but rather reiterated existing policy. The USDA, for example, simply reasserted that undocumented immigrants were ineligible for nutritional assistance programs, something that was already established law under PRWORA.

HHS announced that the notice establishing the revised policy takes effect immediately upon publication in the Federal Register and has a 30-day comment period. However, as of press time, no announcement has been published by HHS. The USDA did so on July 10, but as of press time “comments are no longer being accepted.”