A group of U.S. citizen children whose families have been shut out of novel coronavirus pandemic due to their parents’ immigration status have been named as plaintiffs in a new lawsuit against the Trump administration. Under pandemic relief rules, only taxpayers who have a Social Security number are eligible for funds, cruelly shutting out undocumented workers—and nearly four million of their U.S. citizen kids.
“The refusal to distribute this benefit to U.S. citizen children undermines the CARES Act’s goal of providing assistance to Americans in need,” the lawsuit against Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin reads, “frustrates the act’s efforts to jumpstart the economy, and punishes citizen children for their parents’ status—punishment that is particularly nonsensical given that undocumented immigrants, collectively, pay billions of dollars each year in taxes.”
This is at least the second lawsuit related to the exclusion of working families where Mnuchin is named as a defendant, following a lawsuit filed by an Illinois man last month after he was also shut out from financial relief because he filed joint taxes with an immigrant spouse. That lawsuit, filed by “John Doe,” also named impeached president Donald Trump and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as defendants.
“’Mr. Trump and the other defendants have failed ‘to treat him as equal to his fellow United States citizens based solely on whom he chose to marry,’ the lawsuit alleges,” CBS News reported. “John Doe ‘has lawfully filed taxes in the United States, yet he is being denied the rights and privileges under the CARES Act.’”
Similarly, the new lawsuit says the Trump administration “discriminates against U.S. citizen children who have undocumented parents,” and ”punishes citizen children for their parents’ immigration status and treats them worse than similarly situated citizen children whose parents are U.S. citizens or immigrants eligible to obtain Social Security numbers, in violation of the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment of the Due Process Clause.” The administration is also punishing these children by excluding them from viral relief when their parents have been pummeled by the pandemic, the suit continues.
“Undocumented immigrants, on whom these children rely for support, work in large numbers in some of the businesses—including restaurant, cleaning, retail, and child-care services—that have been hardest hit by job loss in the past two months,” the court document says. “Critically, these individuals cannot obtain unemployment insurance—which the CARES Act increased in light of its importance amid the current wave of job loss … this leaves their U.S. citizen children without critical income needed for basic daily needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare.”
Undocumented workers should have been included in relief from the start, not just because they pay taxes, but because it’s the right thing to do. “Congress needs to ensure that all families and individuals, regardless of immigration status, have access to testing and treatment, including access to care via Medicaid and financial support,” Latino leaders recently said in the letter supporting relief for undocumented workers. “We cannot just reap the benefits of immigrant labor and refuse to shield and defend immigrants against the very same monster they are fighting at the frontlines.”