This statement can be attributed to Wendy Chun-Hoon, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., October 1, 2025 – After Congress failed to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2026 by the September 30 deadline, the federal government has shut down. Budgets are moral documents, and Congress should be focused on funding the government in a way that supports children, workers, families, and communities across the country. This includes extending programs that continue to make health care affordable for millions and ensuring that children and families receive the assistance they’re eligible for and need to thrive.
Voters across the country elect their Members of Congress and entrust them to do their jobs. The most basic function of Congress is to pass a budget each year. In a functioning government, this budget would be free from interference by a presidential administration. Instead, the administration is manufacturing chaos and dysfunction to continue to weaken the institutions families rely on to survive.
As conversation and work continue around passing an agreement to fund the government, CLASP’s focus remains on communities being pushed to the margin, workers paid low wages, children, immigrants, communities of color, and people and families living on low incomes.Their safety, security, and well-being should not be held hostage by a dysfunctional government.
Updated April 2, 2025, by Priya Pandey; Spanish version added September 2025 (see link below)
Originally published in 2019 by Rebecca Ullrich and updated in February 2022 by Alejandra Londono Gomez
Early childhood programs play an important role in the lives of young children and their families. But in our current political climate, families across the country are questioning whether it’s safe to attend or enroll.
In January 2025, the Trump Administration rescinded the Biden Administration’s guidelines for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection enforcement actions in certain “protected areas.” Immigration enforcement actions had previously been restricted at or near these locations, which include early childhood programs such as licensed child care, preschool, pre-kindergarten, and Head Start programs.
In response, we have updated “A Guide to Creating ‘Safe Space’ Policies for Early Childhood Programs,” which gives practitioners, advocates, and policymakers information and resources to design and implement “safe space” policies that safeguard early childhood programs against immigration enforcement, as well as protect families’ safety and privacy. The guide also includes sample policy text that early childhood providers can adapt for their programs.
The thread between parent and child should be one of love and stability. But too often, substance use tears at that thread until it frays. Sometimes the fraying goes beyond repair, leaving behind wounds and loss that no one can fix.
This crisis hits home for me. The generational cycle of addiction shaped my life. While I managed to find a path forward, it wasn’t because there was a system of resources and support in place. I survived — but I can’t say the same for people I love, or for countless others across this country.
Recovery Is About Families, Not Just Individuals
When we talk about substance use, we often focus on the individual — their journey, their choices, and their healing. But for mothers, recovery goes far beyond just them. Substance use impacts the entire family. A mother’s journey to recovery is deeply tied to her children, her family, and her community. Without recovery support, trauma seeps between generations like water through cracked foundations, weakening structures that might have otherwise held strong.
Consider two families.
In one, a mother seeks help. She is ready to recover, but does not have access to programming that allows her to stay with her children. There are waitlists. She’s told that programs in her community have been cut back due to lack of funding. Defeated, she tries to hold her family together while struggling alone. Her son grows up carrying the weight of his mother’s pain, internalizing the instability, the stigma, and the silence that follows substance use. Years later, the son turns to substances to cope — and he doesn’t survive his battle. His death represents the loss of a brilliant young man who never got the chance to graduate, walk down the aisle, or become a father — he never had the opportunity to truly thrive. He was one of more than 80,000 people who lost their lives to drug overdoses in 2024.
In another family, a mother enters a treatment program that allows her to keep custody of her children. For the first time, she feels supported rather than punished. She receives counseling, housing support, and guidance from other mothers who’ve walked a similar path. Her children are also welcomed into the process, given therapy and space to process their emotions instead of silently carrying them. Together, the family begins to heal and learns how to overcome the trauma that fueled generations of substance use and pain. By the time the mother completes her program, the family has grown stronger, closer, and more resilient — living proof of what’s possible when recovery embraces the whole family.
The Ripple Effect of Losing Support
In 2023, approximately 19 million children in the United States lived with a parent or primary caregiver struggling with substance use; that’s roughly one in four children. Even more heartbreaking, a child growing up in a home with substance use is eight times more likely to develop an addiction than a child who is growing up in a home free of addiction. This highlights a clear intergenerational cycle of addiction, showing how the cycle repeats when families don’t get the support they need.
When a mother or other caregiver in recovery can’t get the help they need — whether that’s counseling, child care during treatment, peer mentorship, or safe housing — the impact doesn’t stop with them. The consequences ripple outward, shaping the lives of their children and even future generations. For children, this often looks like persistent anxiety or depression, behavioral disruptions or trouble in school, and deep feelings of neglect or abandonment. The effects can linger for years, shaping mental health, relationships, and opportunities well into adulthood.
Children whose mothers lack access to recovery support are more likely to experience housing instability, food insecurity, and trauma. These early hardships not only cause immediate harm but also set the stage for poor health, educational setbacks, and cycles of poverty that are incredibly difficult to break. This is why recovery support must extend beyond the parent — it must embrace the entire family.
The Disproportionate Harm to Black Families
For Black mothers, the stakes are even higher. The child welfare system disproportionately targets Black families, often under the guise of “protection,” but too often mirroring tactics rooted in slavery: separating children from their mothers, weakening family bonds, and undermining the stability of Black households.
Enslaved Black women were denied the right to raise their own children, a deliberate act to dismantle family structures and maintain control. When a Black mother faces substance use challenges, the system is more likely to remove her children rather than provide the support she needs to recover while keeping her family intact. Black children are two to three times more likely to be separated from their families than white children.
This was my own reality. And to make matters worse, after separating families, the system does very little to follow up with the child or parent to ensure their needs are met, their mental health is cared for, and they are not left carrying invisible wounds for years to come.
Policy decisions must be made with care, recognizing their impact not only on individuals but on children, extended families, and entire communities. The conditions we see today in many Black and brown neighborhoods — violence, police surveillance, poor health outcomes, inadequate housing, and limited opportunities — are not the result of individual failings. They are the predictable outcomes of intentional policies and decades of disinvestment. Ending dedicated funding for substance use programs would only intensify these harms, stripping away one of the few pathways to healing and family stability.
What Recovery for Mothers Should Look Like
To create real change, we must invest in a system of care that truly supports recovery and breaks intergenerational cycles of addiction. This means funding and expanding:
Comprehensive, family-centered treatment that allows women to heal without losing custody of their children.
Safe, stable housing that is affordable and located near treatment and support services.
Access to child care during treatment and recovery programs, so mothers don’t have to choose between healing and caregiving.
Peer recovery support led by women with lived experience, who can provide guidance and empathy and reduce stigma.
Culturally responsive care and professionals who address racial inequities and center the needs of Black women and families.
Targeted support for children and youth, ensuring they learn healthy coping mechanisms, build resilience, and receive opportunities to heal as they navigate the impacts of substance use in their families.
Family therapy for parents, children, and extended relatives, designed to strengthen relationships, repair trust, and end intergenerational cycles of addiction.
Research and policy solutions that explicitly connect substance use to mental health and trauma, with a focus on historical and generational trauma as a driver of substance misuse. This includes building a workforce of professionals trained to explore, address, and heal trauma at its core.
The Path Forward
We cannot afford to go backward. Too many lives are on the line. That’s why it’s essential to protect and strengthen funding dedicated to substance use prevention, treatment, and long-term recovery support and services. These resources ensure that people — especially those without insurance — can access treatment, prevention programs, and recovery support. Disrupting these funding streams would be devastating not only to mothers but also to the generations connected to them.
Dedicated and stable funding for treatment, prevention, and recovery services doesn’t just support individuals in recovery, it also creates a lifeline for their children. It ensures families can stay together, heal together, and rebuild together. Without that funding, too many families are left trapped in cycles of trauma, loss, and grief. Ending funding support for substance use deepens racial inequities, perpetuates historical harms, and robs future generations of stability and opportunity.
Instead, we should be expanding investments in family-based recovery models and holding systems accountable for keeping families together. The two families introduced in the beginning stories run parallel, but the outcomes couldn’t be more different. The difference wasn’t the mother’s choices or love — it was access. One family met closed doors while the other found open arms.
Recovery is not just about surviving substance use. For mothers and those they love, it’s about building a future where healing is possible, families are whole, and every generation has the chance to thrive.
For me, this truth carries the weight of my brother, David. He was the son who never got the chance to thrive. His absence is a constant reminder of what’s at stake — the fragile threads that hold families together, and how every policy decision and funding choice determines whether those threads hold or unravel. My heart goes out to every frayed thread that has ended in loss due to substance use. This grief and absence ripple through families, felt for generations to come — a smile no longer there, a presence no longer felt.
The fight for healing and wholeness for families navigating substance use must continue.
Dedicated to “Lil David.” May you rest in eternal peace.
By Christian Collins
The Trump Administration is advancing polices that solely benefit its anti-immigrant, military state agenda. A clear example is the administration’s offering of taxpayer-funded loan forgiveness to incentivize more applicants for openings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Simultaneously, the Trump Administration seeks to strip loan forgiveness pathways from educational institutions, non-profit organizations, government employees, and others who are deemed obstructors to Trump’s political goals.
This statement can be attributed to Wendy Chun-Hoon, president and executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
Washington, D.C., September 16, 2025—On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned order stating that federal agents could continue to detain people and question them about their immigration status based on one or more of these factors: presumed race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; type of employment; and being in an area deemed to have a high concentration of migrants and immigrants. These factors amount to racial profiling and permit policing based on assumptions, biases, and prejudices. Lower courts had issued temporary restraining orders prohibiting the government from employing these aggressive tactics, which violate the Fourth Amendment.
The Court’s order has, at least temporarily, legitimized racial profiling across an untold number of populations, putting millions of U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike at immediate risk. This order erodes the constitutional right of due process, normalizes and expands pre-emptive and discretionary powers given to law enforcement agents, and negates a core tenet of the American justice system: “innocent until proven guilty.”
The case is still pending at the Ninth Circuit, which will hear the full appeal. CLASP supports the previous lower court ruling and will continue to advocate against administrative actions that harm immigrant communities and communities of color.
Washington, D.C., September 12, 2025—This week, rulings on two different court challenges ensured that immigrant families will continue to have access to Head Start and other important programs. Earlier this year, several federal agencies issued notices that would reinterpret the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) to restrict eligibility for some federal programs to “qualified immigrants,” in some cases expanding the list of what are considered “federal public benefits.” Last month, CLASP submitted comments in opposition to this harmful new interpretation. At the same time, several court cases challenged the legality of these actions.
The first case, filed by attorneys general in 20 states and Washington, D.C., challenged the federal government’s reinterpretation of PRWORA and resulted in a preliminary injunction blocking the implementation of the reinterpretation in those states and D.C. This challenge was across three government agencies: the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Labor. In states not covered by the lawsuit, any changes to program eligibility and an implementation timeline are still contingent on additional guidance.
The second case, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, challenged this interpretation, specifically as it relates to Head Start. Yesterday,a federal judge granted a nationwide preliminary injunctionblocking the directive to exclude immigrant children in Head Start nationwide.
“These court rulings are important victories for immigrant families and our country. Unfortunately, so much damage has already been done because these directives have instilled fear, along with the fact that other actions of this administration—including unprecedented immigration enforcement measures—have caused significant harm,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, CLASP’s president and executive director. “We believe that every family should have access to the programs and services they need to thrive, and we will keep fighting until that happens.”
Administration officials have already taken steps to challenge these rulings, as their goal is to reduce access to and ultimately dismantle these important programs. The well-being of our next generation depends on protecting these programs and the children and families they have served for decades.
By Wendy Cervantes
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities continue to impact communities and more children face the loss of a parent to deportation, it’s important to remember that policymakers across party lines have taken steps in the past to mitigate the harm of immigration enforcement on children. There has been an understanding that, regardless of differing views on immigration policy, ultimately no child should be unnecessarily separated from a loving parent. It is one of the reasons there was so much public outcry against the first Trump Administration’s horrific zero-tolerance policy that ripped kids away from their parents at the border.
For example, for more than 30 years there has been some form of a policy in place to restrict enforcement actions in places like schools and hospitals. Similarly, longstanding guidelines have ensured that during large enforcement actions, like worksite operations, protocols are in place to screen for parents and to provide advance notice to schools and child protective services. And for over a decade, an ICE directive has sought to ensure that parents detained by ICE have the ability to make decisions about their children’s care and participate in necessary proceedings if they have a child in the state child welfare system.
While some of these protective policies have been rescinded, the directive related to protections for detained parents was replaced by a new directive under the Trump Administration in July 2025 entitled “Detention and Removal of Alien Parents and Legal Guardians of Minor Children” (“2025 directive”), replacing the Biden-era parental interest directive from 2022.
This blog identifies key changes in the latest directive; what ICE protocols are still in place; how the directive can be used for oversight and accountability, even in today’s environment; and actions Congress can take to protect the rights of parents in ICE custody.
1. What are the key changes between the 2022 and 2025 directives?
While the 2025 directive is, overall, weaker than the 2022 parental interest directive, it continues to provide guidance on many important protections to preserve parental decisions and keep ICE accountable to procedures that are meant to protect parental rights. Among the main differences are the removal of protections for legal guardians of incapacitated adults, which was a new expansion under the 2022 directive, and the removal of humanitarian parole to enter the country for a termination of parental rights hearing. However, several protocols that are intended to afford parents the time and ability to make informed decisions and appropriate preparations for their children are still in the 2025 version.
2. What protective parental interest protocols are still in place?
The 2025 directive outlines the ways in which ICE is to enable parents to make decisions about their children’s care and safety at the point of arrest, prior to removal, and throughout the removal process. It also provides protocols to help enable parents to visit with their children, and ensures that parents who have children in the child welfare system are able to engage in the reunification process, including the ability to participate in relevant court hearings. Importantly, the directive is applicable to parents and guardians of all minor children, not just U.S. citizen children.
3. How can providers and advocates use the directive to protect families and hold ICE accountable?
Organizations, attorneys, advocates, community members, and lawmakers can use the directive to help bring ICE into compliance with its own policies. It is important for attorneys and providers who are working with parents preparing for possible deportation to know about the policy and the protections they should demand from ICE if they are detained and facing deportation. For child welfare practitioners, it is important for them to understand how they can ensure ICE is allowing detained parents to participate in child welfare proceedings and meet other requirements.
Advocates and other stakeholders must demand transparency, including access to information that the directive is required to track—such as the number of people with parental interests in ICE custody, the number who have been deported, and whether or not they were afforded the opportunity to make decisions regarding their children. This both ensures consistent implementation of the directive and that the public more fully understands the extent to which ICE enforcement actions affect children.
4. What action can Congress take to cement protections for parents in ICE custody?
Codifying and strengthening the types of protections included in the directive is the best solution to preserve the rights of parents in ICE custody. Legislation should allow for parents and legal guardians of minor children to be considered for release to continue to care and provide for their children. This was a key piece of the original 2013 directive, but was later removed. Legislation should also extend protocols to all entities working with ICE, including local police who are collaborating on conducting enforcement actions. Additionally, legislation should strengthen data collection and transparency related to the directive. Short of legislation, Congress can also hold ICE accountable to its implementation of the directive through oversight measures.
Research has consistently found that immigration enforcement harms children and families. A study by CLASP conducted under the first Trump Administration found that even children as young as three were demonstrating symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder simply due to the fear of possibly losing a parent. The heartbreaking reality is that millions of children are living with that same fear today as increased ICE arrests—fueled by unprecedented funding levels—tear through communities across the country. Thus, while it is expected that deportation efforts will continue to escalate and families will continue to be at risk, the 2025 directive serves as an important tool to help protect the rights of parents facing deportation.
For more information on the detained parent directive, please see these resources:
Washington, D.C., September 9, 2025—Today’s release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s national Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance data for 2024 shows that while the overall economy is strong, the nation has much more to do to reduce poverty, especially among women and Black Americans.
For the most part, the poverty rate remained largely unchanged from 2023 to 2024. But the poverty rate among Black Americans increased from 17.9 percent in 2023 to 18.4 percent in 2024. And while overall child poverty rates dropped very slightly from 2023, the number of Black children living in poverty increased from 20.3 percent in 2023 to 22.7 percent in 2024, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure. This measure looks at not simply earnings, but the resources people have after factoring in work and medical expenses, taxes, as well as tax credits and non-cash benefits.
For the second year in a row, women faced a large earnings gap. The median earnings for women in 2024 were $45,380, while the median earnings for men were $60,020. This gap is greater than in 2023, when median earnings for women were $43,200 and $57,740 for men.
“These numbers are not surprising,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, president and executive director of CLASP. “The wage gap between men and women has existed for decades, as has the disparity in Black poverty rates compared to the rest of the country. While the nation has made incremental improvements, the reasons for these disparities are systemic, and we must do more to disrupt them. There’s no silver bullet to remedy these inequalities; rather, we need sustained investments to close the gender-racial wage gap—higher wages, more equal access to quality jobs, affordable family care, equitable tax policy, and paid leave. We should solve for people’s basic needs, not eviscerate our social safety net.”
Signs already point to a weakening economy in 2025. For instance, the August 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) jobs report showed an addition of only 22,000 jobs last month, well below economists’ expectations, and unemployment at a four-year high of 4.3 percent.
Black families are the last to do well, even when the economy is growing. The most recent BLS report made that clear, showing the unemployment rate for white men was 3.7 percent, but was 7.1 percent for Black men. The report also showed the unemployment rate for Black women was 6.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white women.
The gender wage gap persists for a variety of reasons, notably that women are still concentrated in some of the lowest-paid jobs, the price of child care remains out of reach for families, and employers are implementing return-to-office policies. The real-world effects of inflexible work policies and unaffordable care are already being felt: the share of working mothers ages 25-44 in the labor market has fallen every month in 2025 and dropped three percentage points between January and June. This is the lowest level of labor force participation from women with children in more than three years.
Increased poverty in 2025 is all but assured due to the severe restructuring of programs that support basic needs in July’s reconciliation bill and the Trump Administration’s executive actions aimed at people with low incomes, immigrant families, women, people of color, and other historically marginalized communities. Congress, with the administration’s approval, has consistently chosen to exclude many families with low incomes and immigrants from the Child Tax Credit, cut Medicaid and SNAP, increase immigration enforcement, and boost tax breaks for the ultra-rich.
“The president promised to lower costs. He and this Congress have clearly broken that promise for so many, making it more expensive for families to afford not just gas and milk but other family basics like housing, health care, and child care. This is not just a broken promise. It’s a breach of contract to the American people,” said Chun-Hoon.
Poverty is not inevitable. It’s the direct result of policy decisions. We know how to reduce it, and now it’s time for policymakers to choose dignity for all and invest in our communities.
By Lulit Shewan
Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is a legal status that was created by Congress in 1990 to provide work permits and protection from deportation to migrants from designated countries where conditions like war and natural disasters can make it unsafe for people to return. While this program was initially intended to be temporary because it does not provide a pathway to permanent legal residence (green card) or citizenship, over a million people have relied on the program and built enduring ties to the United States. TPS has allowed them to better adjust to life in the U.S., earn money to support themselves and their families, and contribute to their communities.
The Trump Administration and its Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are following through on their plans to come after TPS and strip hundreds of thousands of migrants of their legal status. Discontinuing TPS status will immediately render beneficiaries undocumented, deprived of legal standing, and exposed to the threat of detention and deportation. Curtailing TPS is yet another instance of the Trump Administration demonizing a humanitarian program to satisfy its anti-immigrant agenda and create new deportation pathways for those who have established their lives here.
The author would like to thank CLASP colleagues Lorena Roque and Suma Setty for their data extraction of TPS-eligible individuals by state, as well as Sivan Sherriffe for the design of this paper. The author would also like to thank former Hunger Fellow Emily Rodriguez for her thoughtful contributions to the writing and data analysis in this paper.
By Rachel Wilensky and Stephanie Schmit
As Congress negotiates the fiscal year (FY) 2026 appropriations package, another year of level funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which has been proposed in the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill marked up this week, would result in more children losing access to child care. CLASP estimates that the impact of level funding will mean approximately 24,000 fewer children will have access to child care through CCDBG in FY26. The compounded impact of two years of stagnant funding would mean nearly 50,000 fewer children have access to child care assistance.
