Trump Building a Wall Around Federal Benefits

On February 19th, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) entitled “ENDING TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZATION OF OPEN BORDERS” that required Federal agencies to review Federal benefits going to illegal aliens in defiance of the plain meaning of the law and change those policies. Namely, the EO required agencies to align their policies with long-standing law known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). Among other things, PRWORA states, “[i]t is a compelling government interest to remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits.” Before the ink was dry on his signature, President Clinton was already violating the law, pretending many Federal taxpayer-funded benefits were not really benefits under the PRWORA. A common theme in immigration law is Presidents violating their oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. We have been waiting since President Trump’s signature on his own executive order to see it manifest at the agency level. That wait is over. 

On July 10th, a wave of new Federal actions across the government will put this EO into action:

• The Department of Education (DOE) announced that federal programs that provide postsecondary education and other similar benefits, including career and technical education (CTE) programs under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V), and adult education programs under Title II of the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), are federal public benefits and must exclude illegal aliens as beneficiaires.

• The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its expanded interpretation of “federal public benefit” to increase the number of Federal programs excluding illegal alien eligibility. This includes, but is not limited to:  Head Start, Title X Family Planning Program, Title IV-E Educational and Training Voucher Program, and Community Services Block Grant (CSBG).

• The Department of Labor (DOL) promulgated policy guidance that directs the public workforce development system to update all policies and procedures to ensure that all participants served by the programs identified in the guidance are legally authorized to work in the United States.

These actions roll back nonsense “guidance” that mostly dates back to the Clinton era (though the DOL guidance references 2024 Biden/Autopen chicanery as well). The trick was also pulled in the public charge domain. Namely, the same President who claimed not to know the definition of “is” also could not figure out what Congress meant by “no public benefits for illegal [aliens].” Instead, lawyers chopped up the meaning of federal benefits until most benefits the government provided were exempt from the plain language of the strong law President Clinton signed.

This type of deliberate obtuseness was designed to hide behind legal hackery to funnel American taxpayer money to illegal aliens while still looking “tough” and signing immigration enforcement legislation. Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden sadly marched to the beat of the same drum (or saxophone?) and continued to rob their countrymen blind to pay for their cheap labor habit. 

This effort is sure to be challenged in court at the earliest possible date the ACLU can get the laughable suit filed, after which a judge will likely certify a class action or rule it is a “bill of attainder.” However, I think the ultimate fate of this effort will be a Supreme Court victory for the President. 

Many in the media are taking note of President Trump using “dormant” authorities, as if the notion that prior presidents ignoring the law and their duty to enforce it has some binding precedential impact. The Clinton subterfuge was not subject to automatic lawsuits like we see today, but his legal interpretations of the law will not hold up to scrutiny. 

A prime example of this is the HHS review of the Clinton interpretations in comparison to the statute's plain meaning. HHS accuses the Clinton Administration of “convolutedly and incorrectly” interpreting the law, and its interpretation “rests on an overreading of the phrase ‘eligibility unit’ and arbitrary line-drawing.” HHS also points out how the Clinton Administration just made up a test “unmoored from the statutory language” to determine whether the “preponderance” of services were directed at certain communities. 

All of this was designed to remove any force and effect from the law passed by Congress. It was intended to make sure illegal aliens would be able to remain in the United States at the expense of the American workers they were undercutting in wage and employment rates. 

It has taken three decades, but an American President is protecting taxpayer benefits from illegal aliens as required by law. The President’s February EO frames this correctly as the end of American taxpayer subsidization of open borders. It could be a key factor in persuading illegal aliens to self-deport under the President’s announced “Project Homecoming.” However, it is a little ironic that actions restricting public benefits to illegal aliens may inspire them to accept Federal cash handouts in exchange for self-deportation. 

For American workers desperate for a tight labor market to raise their wages and employment rates, this is more encouraging news, given the mixed signals from the President regarding worksite enforcement. Worksite enforcement is the best path for mass deportations, but it must be said that many illegal aliens also come to the United States to avail themselves of public benefits. In 2017, the White House said 50 percent of immigrant families were on welfare. The Migration Policy Institute researchers found that during the first Trump Administration, mere talk of limiting benefits led to massive drops in non-citizen usage of federal benefits, including a 37 percent drop in SNAP usage. So, there is a significant number of illegal aliens that could be motivated to move back home once the taxpayer welfare well dries up, particularly when combined with new restrictions on Federal benefits for illegal aliens under the One Big Beautiful Bill. Simple self-deportation and some spending money are sounding better and better.