Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced Thursday that effective immediately, undocumented immigrants will no longer be allowed to attend Head Start, the federal program that provides child care, nutrition and health assistance to 800,000 low-income infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers.
The announcement bars all people living in the country without legal status from a suite of federally funding public programs, including health clinics, family planning and the low energy assistance program.
While those living in the country illegally are prohibited from using most federal programs, a 1998 notice allowed them to access certain benefits relied on by low-income families with young children. In a press release, however, Kennedy announced that HHS was rescinding this interpretation, limiting the ability of low-income immigrant families to use more than a dozen federal programs run by the agency.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said Kennedy. “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.”
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Head Start has never required documentation of immigration status as a condition for enrollment over the last 60 years of the program, according a statement from the National Head Start Association.
“Attempts to impose such a requirement threaten to create fear and confusion among all families who are focused on raising healthy children, ready to succeed in school and life,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of the National Head Start Association. “This decision undermines the fundamental commitment that the country has made to children and disregards decades of evidence that Head Start is essential to our collective future.”
HHS estimates that prohibiting undocumented immigrants from accessing Head Start would save $374 million in services annually, while costing $21 million in time spent by individuals trying document and review eligibility, as well as transition costs for the Head Start program.
The Education Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Labor also announced that those in the country illegally would be barred from programs run by the agencies, including career, technical, and adult education programs.
“Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, the Administration is taking the biggest step in more than 30 years to protect taxpayer-funded benefits for American citizens — NOT illegal aliens,” the White House said in a press release. “The move, which preserves roughly $40 billion in benefits for American citizens, overturns decades of bureaucratic defiance and builds on President Trump’s executive order directing an END to the subsidization of open borders.”
The announcement shook the Head Start industry, which has already been reeling this year from a series of program layoffs, cuts, and threats to terminate the program entirely.
Head Start leaders said it was not clear how the directive will be carried out.
The memo did not specify, for example, whether immigration status would be checked for the parents or the child, said Ed Condon, executive director of the Region 9 Head Start Assn., which represents four states, including California.
“Family status takes us down one road and child status would take us down another. Most of the kids we serve are citizens,” said Condon. It was also unclear whether the change would apply to all Head Start centers, including those run by school districts. “Everybody is on hold. But this is not good news.”
Limiting access to the program could also deter parents without legal status from enrolling their citizen children in Head Start, said Ted Lempert, president of Children Now and a former California Assembly member.
“We guarantee every kid an education in this country, regardless of status,” he said. “That shouldn’t be different in terms of early education, and certainly not when it comes to Head Start.”
The federal action — which comes on the tail of additional cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food assistance in the just-approved Republican budget — will impact some of the most vulnerable young children in the nation, child care experts said.
“Lower income families often avail themselves of multiple services,” including housing, energy and food assistance, said Donna Sneeringer, chief strategy officer for the Child Care Resource Center, which provides Head Start services to 2,500 children in Southern California. “They are doing everything they can to put the pieces together to care for their families.”
The notice announcing the change in policy will be published in the Federal Registry, at which point a 30-day public comment period will begin.
HHS said the change, however, is effective immediately because “any delay would be contrary to the public interest and fail to address the ongoing emergency at the Southern Border of the United States.
In a press release, the ACLU said that if the notice takes effect, plaintiffs in a lawsuit that was filed in April challenging attacks by the Trump administration to Head Start plan to amend their complaint to include the changes.
This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
