Federal Judge Halts Trump-Era Policy Restricting Head Start Access for Immigrant Children Nationwide

In a striking rebuke of the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict federal benefits, a federal judge in Washington state issued a nationwide injunction preventing the enforcement of a policy that sought to deny Head Start enrollment to children living in the country without legal status. This move halts an aggressive reinterpretation by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) designed to classify certain social services—including the vital preschool program—as “federal public benefits” from which undocumented immigrant families would be excluded. The policy threatened to remove more than 100,000 vulnerable children from early education opportunities that have long supported low-income...