The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last week that it would expand the list of federal funding streams that exclude most undocumented immigrants, including several programs related to child welfare.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in a statement announcing the plan.
The policy decision rescinds a decades-old interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, the bipartisan bill that rewrote federal welfare policy and funding during the Clinton administration. Written two years after the bill was signed, that interpretation established a long list of federal public benefits that only “qualified aliens” could be connected to.
This includes children and adults who are lawful permanent residents, refugees, those who have been awarded asylum, and those who have been “paroled” into the country awaiting determination of their status. With rare exception, any other immigrant would be deemed a “nonqualified alien” and be ineligible for federal benefits.
But the Trump administration’s view is that the Clinton-era interpretation did not go far enough, and too narrowly defined what federal programs should be subject to immigrant restrictions. So it issued a new interpretation that critiques the previous limits on what is considered a “federal public benefit,”
Among the programs it is now adding are three very specific to child welfare:
- Educational and Training Voucher Program, a part of the Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood. Often referred to as ETV, this is about $45 million that goes to states every year to help current and former foster youth pay for college or some other form of postsecondary education.
- Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program, or Kin-GAP, which in 2008 was added as an optional piece of the Title IV-E program as part of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. It permits states to draw down IV-E funds for a share of the payments made to family and other kin who are willing to care long term for a child in foster care, but do not wish to adopt them.
- Title IV-E Prevention Services Program, another optional add-on to IV-E that became law in 2018 as part of the Family First Prevention Services Act. Whereas IV-E was almost entirely focused on funding out-of-home care for youth, this enables states to tap into it for services and programs meant to help parents without the removal of their kids.
Just days before Trump’s second inauguration, the Biden administration actually clarified the rules for IV-E Prevention Services in the other direction. On January 15 of this year, the federal Child Welfare Policy Manual was updated to say that “Title IV-E agencies that choose to operate the title IV-E Prevention Program may not deny children access to these services based on their immigration status or the immigration status of their family members.” So last week’s action reverses that.
The biggest program on the list of additions is Head Start, the $12 billion early childhood education program that serves as a critical piece of the child care continuum in the United States. The HHS announcement said a preliminary analysis shows that $374 million in annual Head Start spending would be redirected back to “American citizens.”
The following federal programs are also on the list and are now considered to be federal public benefits:
- Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics
- Community Mental Health Services Block Grant
- Community Services Block Grant
- Health Center Program
- Health Workforce Programs not otherwise previously covered (including grants, loans, scholarships, payments, and loan repayments)
- Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Treatment, Prevention, and Recovery Support Services Programs administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
- Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness Grant Program
- Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant
- Title X Family Planning Program
HHS said that it would receive public comments for the next 30 days on the change, but that appears to be ceremonial since the change will go into effect immediately.
“Any delay would be contrary to the public interest and fail to address the ongoing emergency at the Southern Border of the United States,” the policy announcement says.
