Ben Carson Wants To Kick Undocumented Workers Out Of Public Housing
The Trump administration has introduced a devastating new policy to prevent undocumented family members of U.S. citizens and documented immigrants from living with them in public housing. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is apparently leading the effort.
“Thanks to @realDonaldTrump's leadership, we are putting America's most vulnerable first,” tweeted Carson on Thursday (April 18). “Our nation faces affordable housing challenges and hundreds of thousands of citizens are waiting for many years on waitlists to get housing assistance.”
The proposal seeks to evict undocumented family members from public housing instead of continuing the policy of adjusting their families’ benefits to exclude them. The rule was sent to Congress for a 15-day review period on Wednesday. It’ll be available for public comment prior to it moving ahead.
The move is just the latest family-separating policy coming from the Trump administration. Most recently, Donald Trump proposed the idea of sending undocumented immigrants at the U.S. and Mexico border to live in American sanctuary cities. That came a year after his disastrous family separation policy, which took children from their parents and housed them in cages. Thousands of families are still waiting to be reunited as a result.
Groups who work with landlords, tenants and housing authorities claim HUD’s new proposal is attempting to address a non-existent problem regarding undocumented immigrants and fails to address a very real problem of public housing shortage.
“We’re very concerned about this, this is obviously part of the administration’s overall attack on immigrant families,” Karlo Ng, supervising attorney at the National Housing Law Project, said, according to Buzzfeed. “There’s a lot of concern for families who are currently being assisted. This is going to add to the chaos for families who need crucial assistance.”
Undocumented people currently don’t qualify for public housing assistance, and under law, all applicants must be U.S. citizens or documented residents. All must go through an immigration screening process.