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The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) withdrew proposed regulations that would deny housing assistance to mixed-status immigrant households. This is a positive step towards tearing down Trump’s ‘invisible wall’ of regulatory actions that threaten the wellbeing of immigrants living in the U.S. and cut off pathways to citizenship. 

According to the Federal Register notice, posted April 2nd, HUD identified the proposed rule as being inconsistent with recent executive orders and the principles of advancing racial equity and strengthening integration and inclusion of new Americans. We completely agree. 

The Trump administration proposed this HUD regulation in May 2019, not long after its public charge rule. Similar in spirit, the rule would have denied housing assistance to an entire family if any person in the household was ineligible due to immigration status. According to its own estimates, HUD’s plan would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of Americans with low-incomes losing vital housing assistance. A cruel and dangerous move that hides the real issue: a lack of affordable housing and insufficient funding for assistance programs make it difficult — if not impossible — for under-resourced families to find a safe place to call home. 

We saw the proposed policy for what it was: a scare tactic to force undocumented members of our communities deeper into the shadows and discourage new immigration. Read our 2019 public comments for more. We are relieved to see this proposal withdrawn, and will continue urging the Biden administration to pass policies that uplift, rather than punish immigrant Americans. 

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