A federal judge has issued a nationwide block on a Trump administration directive that prevented children in the U.S. illegally from enrolling in Head Start, a federally funded preschool program.
Head Start associations in several states filed suit against the policy change by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ruling by a federal judge in Washington state on Thursday comes after a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general succeeded in temporarily halting the policy’s implementation within their own states.
With the new ruling, the policy is now on hold across the country.
Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesman, said the agency disagrees with the court’s decisions and is evaluating next steps.
In July, HHS proposed a rule reinterpretation to disallow immigrants in the country illegally from receiving certain social services, including Head Start and other community health programs. Those programs were previously made accessible by a federal law in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
The change was part of a broader Trump administration effort to exclude people without legal status from accessing social services by making changes to federal eligibility rules.
Those immigrants would be barred from accessing the impacted programs because they would be reclassified as federal public benefits — an alteration that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said could disincentivize illegal immigration. People in the country unlawfully are largely ineligible for federal public benefits, which include food stamps and student loans.
In issuing the preliminary injunction Thursday, Judge Ricardo Martinez said he saw no reason for a change to the interpretation of eligibility that has been in place for decades. He said it threatened access to services that families rely upon. --->READ MORE HERE
A federal judge on Wednesday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump's administration from barring migrants living in the U.S. illegally from accessing numerous federally funded services, including Head Start preschools, health clinics, and food banks.
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Providence, Rhode Island, at the behest of 21 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, issued a preliminary injunction preventing rules from taking effect that imposed new immigration-related restrictions on a variety of programs.
Those new policies were adopted as part of Trump's aggressive immigration agenda beginning on July 10 by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, and Justice and marked a shift in how the government interpreted a 1996 law that limited migrants' access to government benefit programs.
Among the programs impacted was Head Start, which is overseen by HHS and provides early childhood education, health, and nutrition to low-income children and families.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act has long been interpreted to require states to verify a person's lawful immigration status before allowing access to certain programs, such as Medicaid, but not others that are generally open to all in a community.
The Trump administration reinterpreted that law to revoke exemptions that had been in place for nearly three decades to now require states that accept federal funding to verify applicants' status before they can access services such as domestic violence shelters, soup kitchens, and adult education.
The new policy also applies to some people who are in the country legally, such as those with student visas.
"The Government's new policy, across the board, seems to be this: 'Show me your papers,'" McElroy wrote. --->READ MORE HERE
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