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CLASP, the Center for American Progress, the National Women’s Law Center, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children submitted a sign-on letter opposing the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) proposed Head Start rule titled, “Restoring Flexibility to Support Head Start Program Access.” The letter was signed by 120 national, state, and local organizations urging HHS to rescind the proposed rule and defend the current regulations that would increase Head Start workforce compensation and benefits to reflect the value of their essential work.

>>Read Our Comment Here

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., June 10, 2026 – CLASP denounces the passage of a budget reconciliation bill that will cause immeasurable harm to families across the country. Congress’ decision to pass legislation giving an additional $70 billion to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), on top of the billions they already received last summer, flies in the face of the policies people need to thrive. Families are struggling to make ends meet as a direct result of policy choices by Congress and the Trump Administration. One of those decisions, the Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025, gutted food assistance and health care and has contributed to over three million people no longer receiving SNAP and a 20 percent enrollment decrease in ACA health care coverage.  

Adding billions more to ICE and CBP’s budgets harms children and communities and does not increase safety. It is an irresponsible use of resources consistent with the administration’s terror campaign against immigrants, families, and cities. Since January 20, 2025, ICE and CBP have perpetrated egregious sexual violence against vulnerable communities, militarized communities, and violated their own policies around safeguarding the well-being of children. This has resulted in an estimated 145,000 children in the U.S. experiencing a parent getting detained in immigration facility; at least 79 children harmed by tear gas or pepper spray; and over 6,200 kids placed in immigrant detention camps. CLASP’s reports, which cover findings from conversations with early care and education providers and parents of young children in seven states, make it clear how immigration enforcement is traumatizing children, burdening child care and early education providers, and creating social, emotional, and economic shockwaves in communities throughout the United States. This funding will only continue to separate families and traumatize all children and their communities, regardless of their immigration status.  

Funding for immigration practices that separate families and harm children is not what people want or need, now or ever. CLASP will continue to work toward a country where children have the opportunities to thrive with their loving caregivers and a government that invests in what families and communities need instead of tearing them apart. 

On May 20th, Suma Setty presented on the Documenting the Impact reports to the Chicago Dual Language Learners Coalition.

On May 28th, Suma Setty presented alongside Tiffany Chang at Protecting Immigrant Families on the impacts of immigration policies on children to the Prevent Child Abuse AZ Coalition.

By Teon Hayes

New brief from CLASP argues that allowing SNAP participants to buy rotisserie chicken is a helpful but a far too limited reform. SNAP’s ban on most hot or prepared foods does not reflect the realities of many families, workers, older adults, disabled people, or people without reliable kitchens. Congress should remove the hot foods ban more broadly and modernize SNAP around dignity, choice, and access.

Food flexibility will mean little if paired with benefit cuts, work requirements, or added barriers. Real reform should expand access, protect eligibility, and trust people to choose the food that meets their needs.

>> Read the full brief

By Jo Napolitano

[EXCERPT]

“Part of that mass deportation agenda is to basically dismantle the legal immigration system,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of the Immigration and Immigrant Families team at the Center for Law and Social Policy. “But we know that everything from the efforts to dismantle birthright citizenship, to strip away TPS, to weaken DACA protections, as well as make it harder to apply for lawful status … it’s all part of a concerted plan to grow the undocumented population.”

Read the full article. 

by JESÚS JANK CURBELO

[EXCERPT]

Suma Setty, senior policy analyst for immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit that focuses on low-income families in Washington, D.C., said the directive may be unenforced.

“There’s no accountability mechanism in place to make sure that ICE officers actually account for parents’ rights,” she said. “There [are] a lot of reports out there that have found that ICE is not doing that and that children have been left in dangerous situations.” She described a mother with children in the Detroit metro area who went a week without eating in October 2025 because she was too afraid to go to the grocery store.

Read the full article. 

By Cristina Tudino

[EXCERPT]

An April 2026 report by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) confirms that ICE is making it harder for childcare workers to do their jobs while also preventing working parents from getting the help they need.

“The environment of fear is destabilizing an already precarious industry and threatening childcare supply for all families, whether or not they’re documented citizens,” says Suma Setty, senior policy analyst at CLASP.

Read the full article. 

Washington, D.C., May 11, 2026 — Today the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) published its anticipated final rule for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which rescinds the 2024 final rule. This includes removing requirements to:

• limit family copayment to 7 percent of a family’s income;
• provide some direct services through grants and contracts for specific populations; and
• pay providers prospectively and based on enrollment.

In response to this final rule, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)’s Executive Director, Wendy Chun-Hoon, issued the following statement:

“CLASP opposed these recissions in our comment submitted in February, and we remain firm in our opposition today. As so many families across the country grapple with the affordability crisis, rolling back the 2024 provisions will only weaken the child care sector, make it more difficult for committed educators to remain in the field, and make child care more expensive for families.

At a moment when the child care sector is significantly challenged and under-resourced and families are struggling to find and afford care, we need real investments and real solutions that will lift people up and meet their needs—not tear them down and make what is hard even harder. We need significant investments in child care and policies that recognize and support the value of children, families, and child care providers.

This final rule enacts policies that will further destabilize an already fragile child care system, jeopardizing both families and providers. This is not what our nation needs. Instead, we need robust federal investments in a child care system that values and pays providers well and makes access to care simple for families—along with states that center the needs of children, families, and providers in decision-making.”

By Shira Small, Stephanie Schmit, and Rachel Wilensky

As Congress negotiates the fiscal year (FY) 2027 appropriations package, CLASP is calling to double the discretionary funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which provides child care assistance for families with low incomes and increases the quality of child care for all families. Only 15 percent of eligible children had access to child care assistance through CCDBG and other federal sources in 2021, the most recent year with available data. Increasing the total discretionary funding to $17.66 billion would expand subsidy access to more than 870,000 additional children, based on CLASP analysis. This added funding would be crucial to better reach and support families with low incomes, who have never been able to fully utilize the program as the result of decades of insufficient funding.

In addition to limiting access for eligible families not yet accessing the program, years of inadequate and stagnant funding for CCDBG mean that children currently accessing the program are at risk of losing assistance due to increasing costs. Recent actions by the administration to freeze or delay funding for child care, paired with limited increases in funding and the expiration of child care COVID relief resources, have only undermined the child care and early education sector further. These actions include:

• The most recent $85 million increase for CCDBG in FY26 did not keep pace with inflation, falling over $160 million short of what’s necessary to ensure there are enough resources to serve all children currently accessing care through CCDBG.
• The July 2025 reconciliation package made dramatic cuts to public benefits programs, putting further financial strain on states that were already struggling to meet the demand for eligible families in their states.
• The expiration of COVID relief funds left many states without the funding necessary to continue serving the number of children and child care providers they were able to support during the pandemic.
• The Trump Administration has attempted to freeze states’ child care funding, spread misinformation about fraud in the child care sector, and proposed regulations that would weaken provider compensation and reduce families’ affordability protections.

As Congress engages in the FY27 appropriations process, it is essential that they protect programs families rely on and fight for investments that align with need, like urgent investments in child care. Concerns about economic stability, rising inflation, and attacks from the Trump Administration make sustained increases in annual discretionary funding a necessary support. The table below estimates the total per-state allocation from doubling current CCDBG funding and how many more children would be able to access care with the increased funds.

>>Download the full report