EL PASO, TEXAS — A lawsuit filed by the states of New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota Thursday challenges the Trump administration’s decision to block congressionally appropriated child care funding for all families in those states. The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, argues that Trump officials “lack any authority to impose and maintain the ACF Funding Freeze” [sic] in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, and that it violates the Spending Clause in Article I of the U.S. Constitution, as a politically-motivated effort “to coerce states to align themselves with the Trump Administration’s priorities” targeting lawfully present immigrants and their families.
Experts estimate that the Trump administration policy threatens child care for hundreds of thousands of children in the plaintiff states. While the administration has not released documentation that it considered the harm to families and the economy, the Bipartisan Policy Center estimated last fall that preexisting child care shortfalls cost as much as $329 billion a year in lost family income, business productivity, and government tax revenue.
Immigrants account for about 14% of the population, but immigrant families account for about 28%, meaning that about half of the people in immigrant families are U.S. citizens – overwhelmingly children. Importantly, the Trump administration child care freeze threatens care for every family in the plaintiff states.
In response to the lawsuit’s filing, the Protecting Immigrant Families coalition released the following statement from its Executive Director, Adriana Cadena.
“This is bad government at the expense of America’s families. The Trump administration wants to discard checks and balances in favor of a loot-and-pillage philosophy of government. Time and again, they’ve shown that they do not care about the lives they destroy in their attacks on immigrant families. And time and again, they have shown that every immigrant of color – whether lawfully present or not – is a target for their abuses of power. We thank the plaintiff states for their leadership in this important effort to restrain a Trump administration run amok. And we urge Congress to exercise their oversight responsibilities of this administration.”
