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Trudy Taylor Smith<\/p>\nBy Trudy Taylor Smith<\/p>\n
They prove it time and again: officials in the Trump administration don\u2019t care how many lives they destroy and how many communities they devastate in their persecution of immigrant families.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trudy Taylor Smith<\/p>\n
The president made that clear during the State of the Union address when he attacked immigrants as a threat to public safety, deploying lies and hateful rhetoric designed to dehumanize entire communities and to justify violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that has separated families, locked up children and killed dozens of people<\/a> since he took office, including U.S. citizens<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Trump railed against the imagined threat of \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201cmurderers,\u201d the truth is that immigrants are dramatically less likely<\/a> to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens, the vast majority of people detained by ICE<\/a> have no criminal record<\/a>, and thousands of those locked up by ICE are children<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The truth is that immigrants pay more in taxes each year<\/a> than they receive in public benefits, and undocumented immigrants actually subsidize health care<\/a> for other U.S. residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n The truth is that immigrants are neighbors, parents, students, friends. They are human beings who deserve dignity and care.<\/p>\n In this dark moment, youth advocates like me and my colleagues at Children\u2019s Defense Fund-Texas are heartened to see members of Congress such as Rep. Veronica Escobar of El Paso protecting immigrants and their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n In December, she and other Texas members of Congress signed onto a letter<\/a> opposing the Trump administration\u2019s proposed changes to \u201cpublic charge.\u201d This proposal, which could take effect later this year, would have a devastating impact in immigrant and mixed-status families in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n The public charge test considers whether a person applying for lawful permanent resident status \u2013 a \u201cgreen card\u201d \u2013 is likely at any time to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence. If they are, their green card application will be denied.\u00a0<\/p>\n The current public charge test doesn\u2019t apply to all immigrants, and when it comes to public benefit use, immigration officials can only consider past receipt of cash assistance for income maintenance or long-term institutionalization at government expense in making their determination.<\/p>\n However, the Trump administration\u2019s proposal would dramatically change this policy, rescinding protections against arbitrary or biased green card decisions based on lawfully present immigrants\u2019 use of health or social services for which they legally qualify. The proposal openly contemplates the possibility of denying green card applications based on a person\u2019s use of \u201cany type of public benefits,\u201d or even because an applicant\u2019s qualifying U.S. citizen child used a safety net program.<\/p>\n The lack of clarity and accountability could generate fear and confusion that create a chilling effect on access to healthcare, nutrition support, and other critical services for children in immigrant families in Texas who need and qualify for these programs. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) predicts<\/a> that \u201cU.S. citizens who are members of mixed-status households\u201d will \u201cdisenroll from or forgo future enrollment\u201d in public benefits programs because of the proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n This has happened before. Similar policy changes adopted during the first Trump administration deterred about half of people in mixed-status families who needed support during the pandemic from applying<\/a>. Moreover, the nonpartisan Urban Institute found that the Trump policy led to millions foregoing safety net services<\/a>.<\/p>\n Policies targeting immigrant families threaten U.S. citizen children on a massive scale \u2013 especially in Texas, where more than 11 percent<\/a> of U.S. citizen children live with at least one undocumented parent, and more than a third<\/a> of all children in Texas have at least one foreign-born parent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faced with this wholesale attack on the wellbeing of millions, many members of Congress did nothing. But Rep. Escobar took action, writing to oppose this dangerous proposal and urging DHS to withdraw it.\u00a0<\/p>\n We commend their leadership protecting Texas children from this reckless attack, especially after the President\u2019s State of the Union address demonstrated continuing disregard and cruelty toward immigrants and their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n As anti-immigrant policies such as escalating ICE raids, expanding immigration detention, and mass deportations without due process continue to stoke fear, separate families, and cut off access to vital services, we ask our representatives to continue taking action to protect Texas children.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trudy Taylor Smith is senior administrator of policy and advocacy for Children’s Defense Fund-Texas. She lives in Austin.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/elpasomatters.org\/2026\/03\/09\/opinion-trump-immigration-policies-public-charge-texas-children\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/elpasomatters.org”>El Paso Matters<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elpasomatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/cropped-epmatters-favicon2.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/elpasomatters.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=111868″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/elpasomatters.org\/2026\/03\/09\/opinion-trump-immigration-policies-public-charge-texas-children\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/elpasomatters.org\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Special to El Paso Matters, El Paso Matters March 9, 2026 By Trudy Taylor Smith They prove…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2353,138,140,139],"class_list":["post-196921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-commentary","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}