California and a coalition of 20 other states secured a temporary pause Friday on the Trump administration’s new rules barring immigrants living in the country illegally from accessing dozens of federally funded programs, including child care, health care and nutrition services.
The pause comes days after the coalition, made up of California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 20 other attorneys general, sued the administration over the policy change, which the federal government announced earlier this month and said was necessary to ensure taxpayer-funded “public resources are no longer used to incentivize illegal immigration.”
As part of the Trump administration’s change, federally funded programs would be required to verify recipients’ immigration status — reversing a Clinton administration policy that extended “public benefit” programs to people living in the country without legal permission.
Programs included in the Trump administration’s restriction would include mental health services, adult education, substance use treatment and prevention, temporary housing assistance, cooling centers, food banks and early childhood education and childcare services, including Head Start — a national program that serves more than 750,000 low-income children aged 0 to 5-years old across the U.S. The program provides free school meals and medical screenings, child care, and support and job assistance for parents.
California said the state’s Head Start programs served more than 80,345 children and families in 2023-24 at 1,842 individual site locations. And an EdSource analysis of Head Start data found California Head Start programs are expected to receive $1.5 billion in federal funding for the 2025 fiscal year.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said preliminary analysis by the agency estimates American citizens could receive as much as $374 million in additional Head Start services annually through the change.
But Bonta’s office said the Trump administration’s “abrupt reversal of nearly three decades of precedent” amounted to a “cruel” and “devastating” attack on some of the state’s most vulnerable residents, including low-income families, at-risk youth and survivors of domestic violence.
The states’ lawsuit said the new verification requirements would also be extremely costly, costing states’ economies “hundreds of millions of dollars each year” and threaten the programs’ abilities to continue providing services to all residents, “not just noncitizens.”
Bonta’s office said the change would “have a chilling effect” and lead to decreased enrollment. His office said if regional recipients don’t hit the mandatory 97% enrollment targets, they will lose federal funding and be forced to shut down, harming all participants.
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The states’ lawsuit includes California, New York, Washington, Rhode Island, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Wisconsin.
The coalition secured an agreement Friday temporarily preventing the Trump administration from making any immigration-based eligibility changes to the programs before September 3, 2025.
“The Trump Administration threw Head Start and other social safety net programs into chaos when it abruptly reversed nearly three decades of federal law and policy that opened these programs up to all,” Bonta said Friday in a statement. “With today’s agreement, these critical programs — and the families who rely on them — can breathe a little easier. California will not back down in the fight to protect access to these programs that help ensure that our communities thrive.”
