Illegal aliens are mostly ineligible for federal public benefits, such as food stamps, student loans and financial aid for higher education, but children have been able to enroll in preschool-aged Head Start since the Clinton administration.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has announced Head Start will be reclassified as a federal public benefit, which will exclude illegal aliens from participating in the program.
“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” Kennedy said in a statement. “Today’s action changes that — it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”
Implemented in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the goal of Head Start is to provide education and nutrition to low-income children to prepare them for elementary school.
Despite an emphasis on boosting education, Head Start is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The program’s funding for the 2024 fiscal year was $12.2 billion, a majority of it distributed through grants, which benefitted approximately 800,000 children, including preschoolers, infants, and toddlers.
It is unclear how many of those children are illegal immigrants, since classrooms do not document immigration status, but HHS estimates the number is 115,000 or about 15% of current enrollment.
Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, insists the HHS announcement is legal and predicts it will hold if challenged in court.
After the HHS announcement, immigrant advocacy groups and the ACLU have vowed to sue.
“The Supreme Court ruling back in 1982, Plyler v Doe, says that any child in this country has to be given a publicly-funded K through 12 education,” he advises. “Head Start is before kindergarten. It's not covered by that ruling."
Mirroring the statement from Kennedy, Mehlman says Head Start is intended to help American children who suffer when the program is stretched to cover children who are illegal immigrants.
“If you have a finite resource, you have to decide how you're going to allocate it,” he says. “And the priority should be on allocating it to kids who are legally in the country."
In the state of Mississippi, one of the country’s poorest states, Head Start said it served 18,400 children from newborns to age 5 during 2024.
An eligible child in Mississippi is defined as one whose family income is at or below 100% of the federal poverty level. A family of family, with an income of $32,150, would qualify for a Head Start classroom.
