Republicans push to end immigrant benefits in Democratic states

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – In California, a child living in the country illegally can see a pediatrician, pay in-state tuition at public universities and receive state-funded scholarships. Immigrant farmworkers can likewise receive state-funded medical and dental care.

California leaders have gradually expanded the services available to immigrants in the country illegally, expressing a sense of obligation to workers who toiled in fields and factories and contributed to the state’s prosperity.

Other Democratic-led states have done the same, with growing confidence that they were free from federal interference as long as they paid for the benefits themselves.

But President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are now using various levers to upend those efforts from Washington.

And Democrats, including three possible presidential candidates who have proposed scaling back immigrant benefits for their own reasons, are left wrestling with how to respond.

Republicans are driven, some of them say, by a belief that benefits for immigrants entice people to enter the country illegally. Other Republicans also say they object to the idea that Americans’ tax dollars – no matter where they are collected – go toward immigrants living in the country illegally.

“They can just come in here and sign up for health care, and we’re supposed to pay for it at the expense of some of our most vulnerable citizens?” said James Gallagher, the Republican leader of the California Assembly. “I don’t think that’s a right use of our priorities.”

In liberal states, Republicans have newfound leverage from Washington after being powerless for years to block the expansion of immigrant services in their states.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order targeting state laws “that provide in-state higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-state American citizens.” This week, the Department of Homeland Security started an investigation of a California program that helps some impoverished older and disabled immigrants, warning that “the gravy train is over.”

Perhaps the biggest concern for Democratic states is the reconciliation bill that Congress is considering, which calls for penalizing states that use their own funds to provide health care to immigrants living in the country illegally.

That could cost states billions of dollars and make it financially untenable to continue those programs. It would also force states to decide between cutting some health care services for citizens or all services for immigrants lacking permanent legal status, potentially creating a political wedge in Democratic states.

“They’re trying to create incentives and punishments for those states that provide benefits to undocumented people,” said Kevin R. Johnson, former dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis.

He added: “The bigger picture is President Trump and his administration are dead set against immigrants, legal or undocumented, receiving any public benefits from the federal or state government.”

Fourteen states provide health care to children from low-income families and living in the country illegally, and half of those also cover at least some adults lacking permanent legal status, according to KFF.

Some of those states have begun retrenching on immigrant health care because of their own fiscal problems, even before Republicans in Congress approve the reconciliation bill.

In Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers this week agreed to scale back health care benefits for adults lacking permanent legal status to solve a budget gap, prompting outcry from progressive leaders. In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed eliminating health care for middle-age adults living in the country illegally.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called this week for a freeze in enrollees lacking permanent legal status who are in the state’s Medi-Cal program, as well as a $100 monthly charge for immigrants who continue to receive benefits.

Democratic leaders say their moves were driven by the realities of their budgets, not by a need to acquiesce to the wishes of Republicans in Washington. But the optics are unavoidable, and many on the left wondered this week if Newsom’s proposal was his latest attempt to moderate his image as he considers a presidential run in a nation less friendly to immigrants living in the country illegally than it was several years ago.

The situation has begun to split Democrats, with some saying that the party should fight for immigrants lacking permanent legal status rather than retrench in the face of Trump’s moves.

“It’s always really easy to pick on immigrant communities,” said Lena Gonzalez, a Democratic state senator who leads the California Latino Legislative Caucus.

“We have seen this playbook time and time again,” she added. “We’re valued enough to be at work and be productive, but we’re not valued enough to be given a basic right, which I think is health care.”

In Vermont, legislators in 2021 overwhelmingly approved a plan to use state funds to provide health care for children and pregnant women living in the country illegally.

“This is a population that is critical to the economics of the state,” said Alyssa Black, a Democratic state representative from Essex, Vermont. “We love to tout our dairy industry, and our dairy farms survive on their labor.”

She specifically recalled the legislative testimony of one mother, an immigrant from Guatemala, who said that when both her sons were sick, she could take only one to the doctor – the younger boy, who was born in the United States.

Black said she had learned Wednesday of looming fiscal consequences for states providing benefits to residents lacking permanent legal status.

“My heart just broke,” she said. “How can the federal government come in and determine what states can do with their state dollars?”

Two dozen states allow students living in the country illegally to pay in-state tuition at public colleges, and most of them also let those students apply for financial aid, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, which collects education data.

They are mostly Democratic-led states such as New York, but even a handful of Republican states such as Texas and Utah provide such discounts.

Florida, however, this year ended in-state tuition for students lacking permanent legal status.

Six states provide cash assistance to some low-income immigrants who are older, blind or disabled but don’t qualify for federal Supplemental Security Income, according to the National Immigration Law Center. At least five states offer food assistance to some noncitizens.

Although the federal government doesn’t pay for these programs, they’re being scrutinized by Trump, who previously tried to deny green cards to immigrants who legally used any federal benefits such as food stamps and housing vouchers. He wanted to vastly expand the so-called “public charge” rule that has discouraged citizenship applicants from relying on public aid, an effort later rejected by courts.

“Any area where there’s public taxpayer dollars that are being used in a way that incentivizes lawbreaking is problematic and should be revisited,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif.

Kiley spent years as a lawmaker in Sacramento, where he was in the political minority, routinely objecting to California policies but lacking the power to stop them. Now in Congress, he is part of a majority that is trying to change how states such as California spend their dollars.

The Republican reconciliation bill, which conservatives blocked Friday to seek deeper spending cuts, would cut Medicaid funding to states that use their own funds to pay for health care for low-income immigrants living in the country illegally. Under the legislation, 14 states stand to collectively lose $75 billion from 2028-34 if they keep those programs in place, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

That approach amounts to “weaponizing federal funding,” said Xavier Becerra, who was President Joe Biden’s secretary of health and human services. Becerra said he expected states to fight in court to stop the federal government’s interference.

“Much of what they’re doing ultimately will be overturned, especially if it starts to go into areas that the federal government doesn’t control,” said Becerra, a former attorney general of California who is now a Democratic candidate for governor.

Immigrant groups fear that the federal government may have other motivations for dipping into state affairs.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had subpoenaed Los Angeles County for records, including the identities of people who applied for the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants. The department said it was exploring whether the state had used federal funds to support ineligible noncitizens.

It was believed to be one of the first requests this year for state data on immigrants outside the criminal justice system.

The Trump administration’s attempt to collect “personal data, postal and sensitive data from people who are seeking benefits for which they are eligible, compromises their privacy and will chill access to critical services for California residents,” said Tanya Broder, senior counsel at the National Immigration Law Center.

If Democratic-led states thought they were on safe ground to provide their own benefits to immigrants without interference from Washington, it may have been because past Republican leaders believed in upholding states’ rights.

Mike Madrid, a “never Trump” Republican and former political director of the California Republican Party, said the federal government’s actions to disrupt how states serve their residents ran counter to long-standing conservative orthodoxy.

“This is unconscionable from a classically conservative position,” Madrid said, “and it just speaks to how much, not just the Republican Party has changed, but how much the country has changed.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.