A new federal rule proposed by the Trump administration would cut DACA recipients out of health coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
Juan Gomez, senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, says DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants had been fully barred from any coverage through the ACA since its inception in 2010, and through its implementation in 2014. Then, last November, a Biden administration rule went into effect that finally changed that, allowing DACA recipients to access the health care marketplace for the first time.
“So it was a very long time coming, over a decade of advocacy, fighting for DACA recipients to gain access. So this announcement from the Trump administration is definitely not surprising, but very disappointing,” he said. “This is something in the past few decades that has been a trend — of trying to figure out how to cut immigrants away from accessing benefits, even though those are immigrant communities that are paying taxes and contributing to those benefits.”
More than a decade since its creation, the Obama-era DACA program has given temporary protection from deportation and a work permit to some 800,000 young people brought to the U.S. as children. But the program has been in legal limbo for years.
Gomez says a survey showed about a third of DACA recipients reported being uninsured or not having access to coverage before the Biden-era change. Roughly 300,000 U.S.-born children have a parent with DACA status.
He says recipients who have ACA coverage right now are not in danger of losing it for the time being, since the proposed rule is still being considered and not finalized.
