24 States Sue Trump Admin Over Handing Welfare Data to DHS
The federal government wanted to turn welfare rolls into an immigration database, but two dozen state attorneys general just stepped in to say absolutely not.
The Trump administration decided it would be a great idea to let the Department of Homeland Security sift through personal information from families getting food and financial aid. The official justification? Making sure undocumented immigrants aren't sneaking onto welfare rolls.
State officials saw it a bit differently. A coalition of 24 states just filed a lawsuit, arguing that using an anti-poverty safety net as a dragnet for immigration enforcement is completely illegal and breaches federal privacy rules. State attorneys general like Rob Bonta and Jennifer Davenport pointed out that handing sensitive benefit data over to federal agents turns a program meant for struggling families into a surveillance trap.
Poverty assistance was designed back in the nineties to help kids eat, not to help federal agents build massive personal dossiers on low-income residents.
The government's strategy for combatting poverty somehow morphed into turning benefit applications into intelligence files.
Source: Politico
Comments
This is where the magic happens: AI reads your discussion and rewrites the article based on the most interesting comments. Each strong comment adds points to the meter below. Once the meter is full, the article updates live — no page reload needed.