Trump’s immigration agenda worsening childcare crisis, lawmakers warn

Democratic lawmakers, led by the senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth and the representative Mike Quigley, are demanding answers about how Donald Trump’s immigration policies are exacerbating childcare shortages and costs in the US.About 20% of the childcare workforce in the US are immigrants – and as high as 70% in some regions of the US – and the president’s immigration policies could reduce the childcare workforce by an estimated 15%, according to a letter sent today by 48 lawmakers to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF).“Immigration policy changes – including terminations of temporary protected status (TPS), the elimination of other lawful immigration pathways, and immigration raids in and around childcare programs – are driving childcare providers out of the workplace, exacerbating childcare workforce shortages and high prices,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.The lawmakers provided examples of childcare workers ensnared by Trump’s deportation push, including a nanny in Wisconsin, an asylum seeker with no criminal record who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a routine check-in, and immigrant teachers at a preschool in Washington DC who lost their work authorizations and were forced to quit due to TPS terminations by the Trump administration.Trump also revoked protections for childcare facilities and other sensitive locations from ICE raids, and the letter cited cases in Chicago, Illinois and Minnesota, where ICE performed arrests or conducted “visits” to childcare sites, which have caused staff declines.These impacts, the letter explains, have long-reaching effects on the rest of the US economy, causing parents to reduce work hours or leave the workforce altogether. The lawmakers are demanding to know how the agency is assessing the impacts of Trump’s immigration policies on the childcare workforce and what the agency plans to do to prevent further disruptions and mitigate rising costs.The lawmakers are demanding information from the ACF about how it is assessing and responding to the impacts the Trump administration’s immigration agenda is having on the childcare industry.The latest push to rein in the Trump administration’s immigration policies comes as Democratic-led states have begun enacting free universal childcare. New Mexico became the first state in the US to provide universal free childcare, in September 2025.New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, announced last month free childcare programs and investments toward achieving universal free childcare in New York, and San Francisco, California, followed suit a week later.Earlier this week, the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez signed on as the lead in the House to Warren’s Child Care for Every Community Act to deliver universal childcare across the US, capping costs at $10 a day for half of all families and capping costs based on an income scale used in the US military’s childcare program.