Trump policy cutting off Head Start to children without legal status blocked by judge

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 without legal status are largely ineligible for federal public benefits, which include food stamps and student loans. But for decades they have been able to access some community-level programs such as Head Start and community health centers.
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.