Trump Orders Federal Purge of Migrants from Safety Net

In a sweeping reinterpretation of 1996 welfare law, HHS now bars millions from programs including early education, mental health care, adoption support, and recovery services.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a new notice that significantly revises how it interprets the term “Federal public benefit” under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), expanding the programs subject to immigration-related restrictions and effectively reversing a 1998 interpretation that had narrowed the law’s scope.

The reinterpretation, published as an HHS notice pending formal Federal Register publication, replaces the 1998 HHS PRWORA Notice and clarifies that a wider array of health, education, and welfare programs are considered “Federal public benefits,” which are generally unavailable to individuals who are not “qualified aliens” under PRWORA.

Under the new interpretation, HHS states that the 1998 notice improperly narrowed the scope of the law by excluding certain block grants, programs like Head Start, and other benefits based on statutory reasoning HHS now calls flawed. The department argu…