Food banks say that the Trump administration’s discriminatory proposed rule change, which punishes working immigrant parents by denying them a green card to legally access programs that support their basic needs, continues to have harmful effects, even in cases where federal agencies have nothing to do with services offered by local community organizations.
“Stephen Knight, policy and partnerships director for the [Alameda] County Community Food Bank, said one woman called and asked for her mother’s name to be removed from the food bank's database,” ABC News reports.“He said she was afraid her mother would be deported because she accepted free food from the food pantry, even though it isn't connected to government programs.”
Spanish Catholic Center caseworker Rodrigo Aguirre told ABC News “that mothers, especially, are afraid their information will be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that they could be separated from their children who were born in the U.S.” Fear of falling onto Trump’s deportation radar has led immigrant families to back out of eligible programs since his inauguration.
In January, reports emerged that immigrant parents were dropping their U.S.-citizen kids from vital services like the Children’s Health Insurance Program and forgoing health services themselves. "It's not like things were hunky-dory for immigrants before then,” Joel Berg of Hunger Free NYC said about the public-charge rule proposal, “and now it's just gotten so much worse.”
And that’s the point, at least in the demented mind of the proposal’s mastermind, White House aide Stephen Miller: If you can’t deport immigrant families right away, at least try to make life as hellish for them as possible in the moment. Miller’s other works—like family separation at the border—have continued to go unaccounted-for by the Republican-led Congress, but a Democratic House could certainly change this.
Food banks are among the 1,500 national organizations that have opposed the Trump administration’s proposed rule change, and they are urging the public to submit comments opposing it here. “Hunger is not a partisan issue,” they write. “We remain focused on ensuring that everyone in our communities has the food they need to thrive.”