Housing, trucking, tax credits: Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda has a wide reach

The Treasury Department's proposed rule limiting tax credit refunds by immigration status is the latest in a wave of actions spanning agencies that traditionally had nothing to do with immigration enforcement, including HUD, the FCC, the SBA, and the Department of Transportation. An analysis from the Migration Policy Institute counts more than 500 immigration-related actions in the administration's first year, versus 472 across the entirety of the first Trump term.

Actions include HUD restricting housing programs by immigration status even for households containing U.S. citizens, the SBA barring noncitizens from small business loans, the FCC proposing to limit a low-income phone subsidy to citizens and “qualified” immigrants, and DOT limiting which visas qualify for commercial driver's licenses. A White House spokeswoman said the administration is “putting Americans first,” while a preliminary injunction currently blocks the administration's broader reinterpretation of the underlying 1996 welfare law from taking effect.

Several of the changes rest on agencies reinterpreting or rescinding decades-old guidance on which programs count as “federal public benefits,” including Head Start, certain USDA licenses and grants, and Pell grants — categorizations that previous administrations, including Trump's first, did not apply as broadly.

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