By Jesús García
Excerpt (translated into English):
Among the signatory organizations are the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Democracy Power Project, Hispanic Federation, Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), Latino Victory Project, Mi Familia Vota, Poder Latinx and UnidosUS Action Fund.
On June 11, Suma Setty spoke on the state of immigrant children for CHILDREN AT RISK’s annual Early Childhood Education summit.
On July 16, Wendy Cervantes spoke at the Early Childhood Policy in Institutions of Higher Education’s Federal Policy Institute on a panel entitled ”Thinking Broadly about Early Childhood Policy: Beyond the Classroom.”
On July 17, Alyssa Fortner served as a a panelist at the plenary session of the National Association for Family Child Care’s 2026 annual conference. “The Promise and Pitfalls of Universal Models for Family Child Care” examined what it takes to build universal systems that fully include family child care from the beginning, rather than treat family child care as an afterthought.
by KOMO News Staff
Excerpt:
“We commend Representative Jayapal for introducing Orlin’s Law to ensure that families are not needlessly separated due to immigration enforcement and that parents are able to make decisions about what happens to their children,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families of the Center for Law and Social Policy and director of the Children Thrive Action Network.
“The bottom line is that Orlin should never have been separated from his loving mother, and no child should live in fear of losing a parent. Children have suffered some of the direst consequences of the Trump Administration’s reckless mass deportation campaign, including CLASP’s research that documents how our youngest kids are having their childhoods taken away, with the terror spreading across entire communities. We call on Congress to pass Orlin’s Law to mitigate the harm of immigration raids on children and to hold the Administration accountable by demanding that the Department of Homeland Security release comprehensive data on the number of children impacted by immigration enforcement and to follow its own policy to ensure detained parents can make decisions about their children’s care,” Cervantes continued.
Note: This article was republished by more than 50 other media outlets nationwide.
Washington, D.C., July 16, 2026 – Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finalized its public charge rule, rescinding the 2022 regulations that provided clear standards for how public charge determinations are made. During the rulemaking process, CLASP opposed this proposal through comments submitted to DHS and as part of a coalition of nearly 200 organizations dedicated to children’s well-being. We urged DHS to preserve the longstanding regulatory guardrails that provided immigrant families greater certainty about when accessing public benefits would and would not be considered in public charge determinations.
By removing those protections, the final rule creates confusion and uncertainty that will most likely discourage many immigrant families from seeking health care, nutrition assistance, housing supports, and other essential services. Decades of research show that when families fear immigration consequences, many choose not to access programs for which they or their children are eligible. As a result, the harms of this rule will extend well beyond the people directly subject to the public charge test, with many of the consequences falling on U.S. citizen children in mixed-status families.
Responding to the final regulation’s publication, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) issued the following statement from Wendy Cervantes, its director of the Immigration and Immigrant Families team.
“This public charge policy undermines children’s health and well-being by making it harder for families to feel safe accessing the supports they need. When parents fear that seeking health care, nutrition assistance, or other supports could jeopardize their family’s future, many will simply go without. We have seen this chilling effect before. The result is that children miss out on the care and services that help them grow, learn, and thrive. Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed without their family having to choose between meeting basic needs and protecting their future stability.”
Excerpt:
“The kids that are in detention in these facilities, they’re losing their childhoods every single day that they’re in there,” said Wendy Cervantes, who oversees research and advocacy of immigrant families at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy. …
Biden prioritized placing some of the unaccompanied minors who arrived at the border with sponsors, Cervantes said, and ended the practice of family detention that resumed under Trump. Cervantes said the Biden administration largely followed the Flores Settlement Agreement. …
The sites of some immigration enforcement operations, such as job sites, may be more likely to target adults than children. However, Cervantes notes that some teens working at restaurants or as lifeguards at pools have been apprehended in ICE raids while they’re on the job. She also disputes the Trump administration’s claim that children have not been targets of immigration enforcement.
Note: Several California media outlets have republished this article.
Excerpt:
The Center for Law and Social Policy, which filed comments opposing the new rule, said parents may also forgo care for their children.
“We have seen this chilling effect before. The result is that children miss out on the care and services that help them grow, learn, and thrive,” said Wendy Cervantes, the group’s director of immigration and immigrant families.
By CLASP and the National Women’s Law Center
530A accounts, also known as Trump Accounts, were established last summer through the budget reconciliation law, H.R. 1. Beginning on July 4, 2026, families and loved ones can open 530A accounts on behalf of their children. The federal government will seed eligible accounts with one-time $1,000 contributions for babies born between 2025 and 2028. Families, loved ones, employers, and philanthropic donors can make additional contributions to the accounts, up to a total of $5,000 a year. These accounts will act as tax-advantaged savings accounts that grow over time. When children turns 18, they can use the account balance for certain wealth-building activities, like higher education, or let the account balance continue growing.
But 530A accounts don’t adequately target investments to the families who need them most. Instead, these accounts will allow the rich to get richer, while low- and middle-income families will see more limited gains. Our nation needs effective policies to help close the extreme racial and gender wealth gap, but 530A accounts are not the best approach. This FAQ answers common questions about how 530A accounts will operate for families.
CLASP strongly opposes the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) proposed revisions to overhaul the set of rules, known as Uniform Guidance, governing federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other monetary awards to nonprofits, state and local governments, and other grantees to revise the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance. If implemented, the OMB proposed revisions would create significant financial risk and instability for federal grantees, making it more difficult to provide vital services to communities.
As we explain in more detail in the comments, if implemented, the OMB proposed regulations would cause federal grantees to be faced with unpredictable financial, legal, and reputational risks that increase costs of accepting federal awards while decreasing benefits. Many effective and qualified grantees may be unable to accept those risks. This could lead to disruptions to essential services, such as housing, community development, health, education, child care, food, shelter, community services, disaster recovery, and more in communities and states nationwide.