In a news release, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was rescinding a nearly 30-year-old interpretation of federal law issued under President Bill Clinton that allowed undocumented immigrants to access certain programs because they were not considered “federal public benefits.”
As President Donald Trump pursues his anti-immigrant agenda, this change may be the most direct and far-reaching effort to target children after his attempts to end birthright citizenship. His administration has also ramped up immigration enforcement and deportations, withheld funding for English learners, and threatened to punish states that offer in-state tuition to undocumented college students.
Administration officials have said they hope many immigrants will “self-deport” if the United States makes life here more uncomfortable. Health and Human Services leaders cast the change as a way to protect benefits for Americans.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a press 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.”
Early childhood education advocates, meanwhile, condemned the change as violating both the spirit and the letter of the 1965 law that authorized Head Start. They also warned the change could scare away eligible families, Chalkbeat reports.
“This decision undermines the fundamental commitment that the country has made to children,” Yasmina Vinci, the executive director of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit that represents Head Start staff and families, said in a written statement. “Head Start programs strive to make every child feel welcome, safe, and supported, and reject the characterization of any child as ‘illegal.’”
The change is also at odds with how the Supreme Court has treated K-12 education. In the landmark Plyler v. Doe decision from 1982, the justices ruled that children have a right to a free public education regardless of immigration status. However, the courts have upheld laws restricting immigrants’ access to welfare benefits.
Head Start provided preschool to over 544,000 children from low-income families, according to the latest federal data from the 2022-23 school year, while Early Head Start served more than 186,000 infants, toddlers, and expectant parents.
The program, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, has reached 40 million children but has recently faced a number of challenges, from federal staff layoffs to threats of eliminating the program.
Head Start will now be considered a public benefit, the Trump administration said, because it offers services that are similar to welfare. Officials said the change aligns with Trump’s executive orders, including a February order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.”
“While Head Start provides for school readiness, it also provides low-income children and their families with ‘health, educational, nutritional, and social and other services, that are determined based on family needs assessment,’” federal officials wrote in a notice announcing the change. “Further, it may serve as child care for parents of young children.”
Classifying Head Start as welfare, rather than education, could be a Trump administration strategy to avoid having to address whether the protections extended to undocumented children in Plyler apply here, said Nate Ela, an assistant professor of law at Temple University, in an email.
Reflecting Trump’s America First agenda, Health and Human Services officials said in their press release that Head Start will be “reserved for American citizens from now on.”
But a spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families clarified that U.S. citizen children and “qualified” immigrant children would be eligible for Head Start. Under federal law, that includes legal permanent residents, children who’ve been granted asylum, refugees, and children with humanitarian parole.
In its statement, the National Head Start Association said providers were alarmed that programs would have to check the citizenship or immigration status of children before they could enroll. The law that governs Head Start has never required documentation of immigration status as a condition to enroll, the organization said, and “attempts to impose such a requirement threaten to create fear and confusion among all families.”
It is unclear exactly how the new rules will be enforced. Guidance based on the new legal interpretation is forthcoming, the Administration for Children and Families spokesperson said.
“Are they going to monitor us when they come out for their federal review?” asked Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, the executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association. “Will there be something attached to our grant that we have to certify?”
The latest version of the law governing who is eligible for Head Start says nothing about immigration status, but it does say that the program can use federal funds to train staff, counsel children, and provide other services that are “necessary to address the challenges of children from immigrant, refugee, and asylee families, homeless children, children in foster care, limited English proficient children, children of migrant or seasonal farmworker families, [and] children from families in crisis.”
The law says that children who are experiencing homelessness or whose families have incomes below the federal poverty line qualify. The Migrant Seasonal Head Start program also guarantees child care for the children of farm workers and seasonal workers.
This is not the first attempt to roll back educational rights for immigrant children and families. A number of Republican state legislators have backed bills that would limit enrollment for immigrant children or track their immigration status in ways that could intimidate families. So far, none has been successful. Meanwhile, the author of a brief from the conservative Heritage Foundation that called on states to charge undocumented children tuition to attend public school now works in the Education Department.
Federal officials estimated that the Head Start change would free up $374 million a year for U.S. citizens and qualified immigrants to access Head Start, which represents about 3% of the program’s annual budget in recent years.
But keeping children out of Head Start could lead to more costs down the road for public schools, advocates warned. Kindergartners who don’t go to preschool may need more help with basics like learning their ABCs, colors, and how to work with classmates. They also may have missed out on health screenings.
“We’re really shortchanging our community by cutting them off from strong early childhood programs that are going to put them on the right path to be successful in K-12 schools where they have a guaranteed right to attend,” said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, co-founder of the National Newcomer Network and deputy director of Californians Together, groups that advocate for immigrant rights in education.
There are typically many more children in poverty who qualify for Head Start than the program has funding to serve. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found, for example, that for every 100 young children in poverty, there were typically 28 Head Start seats, with much larger gaps in some states.
Keeping out immigrant children wouldn’t necessarily close those gaps. The main factor limiting Head Start seats is a lack of trained teachers, said Diane Schilder, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a public policy think tank.
“A lot of programs are having challenges hiring teachers in preschool and infant-toddler classrooms who meet the requirements because the wages are not adequate,” Schilder said.
Low-income families are less likely to have documents proving their children are citizens, Schilder said, and anti-immigrant sentiment can scare away even eligible families from applying. Parents are less likely to work when they don’t have access to child care. The effects of these changes would be felt most strongly in urban areas and in communities with a large agricultural workforce.
Head Start providers worry that verifying children’s immigration status will create more administrative work and could make it harder for all families to enroll. Federal officials estimated the cost of assembling documents and reviewing paperwork would be an additional $21 million a year.
And there would be more transition costs to change Head Start protocols, the federal notice stated.
Federal officials said the change would take effect as soon as it is published in the Federal Register. It has not been published, but has been submitted, the Trump administration said. The public will have 30 days to submit comments.
For now, Heather Frenz, the executive director of the Colorado Head Start Association, said her organization is telling Head Start providers to wait for further instructions before un-enrolling any children.
Reconsidering the eligibility or enrollment of children who are already attending Head Start would be expensive and time-consuming, Frenz said. The process involves everything from measuring children’s height and weight to drawing up individual plans.
And if undocumented children miss out on preschool and other services Head Start provides, Frenz said it could “put a lot of strain” on other public entities when those children get older.
“They may not speak English or have never seen a dentist,” Frenz said. “That’s going to be a heavy load on the public school education system.”
Chalkbeat New York reporter Michael Elsen-Rooney, Chalkbeat Philadelphia bureau chief Carly Sitrin, Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea, and Colorado bureau chief Melanie Asmar contributed reporting.
This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.