The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a new legal opinion requiring state agencies to hand over information which will assist in deportations. The change comes from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), ending a Clinton-era standard which narrowly interpreted legal requirements.
Previously, only state agencies which directly receive funds for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) welfare programs were required to share information they acquire on illegal aliens with the DOJ. Now, the DOJ has broadened the interpretation of a statute to include all state agencies.
TANF provides funding to families with children in poverty, while SSI provides financial support to the elderly disabled who lack other sources of income. Agencies administering these programs were required to share data because the benefits attract illegal aliens and therefore generate usable location and identity information which could aid deportation efforts.
Illegal aliens used an estimated $1.43 billion, or 9.4%, of the TANF program.
States and agencies controlled by open borders leftists desire nothing more than to hide other information from the DOJ to protect the illegal aliens leeching America’s welfare system. The prior narrow interpretation allowed blue states to conceal the data on all other state agencies disbursing money to illegals.
The concealment hampered efforts by the Trump administration to target illegal aliens on welfare. Democrat states were simply sending all the illegal alien data to an agency not involved with the welfare programs, and still receiving the welfare money.
Now, that loophole is effectively closed.
Leftist politicians can refuse to send the data to the DOJ, or refuse to collect it altogether, but they will have to defend themselves in court or lose access to large amounts of federal welfare funding. What this ultimately does is force woke elected officials to choose between their prized welfare programs or their protection of illegals.
This step is an important victory against open borders advocates. As a member of the Mass Deportation Coalition, Texans for Strong Borders backs measures that advance President Trump’s promised mass deportations. Making welfare funding contingent on information sharing both increases long-term enforcement capacity and raises the political cost of obstruction.