A DACA recipient walks with her daughter to take her to school before leaving for work in Miami in February 2018. Immigrants brought here as children who received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status became eligible for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act last year, but a recent rule reverses that eligibility. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A recent Trump administration rule prohibits immigrants living in the United States covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from purchasing health insurance on marketplaces covered by the Affordable Care Act.
The change announced in June came into force at the beginning of this month. It reverses a policy change made by the Biden administration regarding the annual enrollment period last November.
DACA, which President Barack Obama established in 2012, applies to some immigrants who are here illegally but were brought to the U.S. as children. The program was introduced to protect them from deportation and enable them to work for renewable two-year periods. To be eligible for the program, an immigrant must have arrived in the U.S. at age 15 or younger before June 15, 2007. DACA participants must also be high school graduates, high school students or U.S. military veterans.
The oldest are now around 40 years aged, some have children of their own.
Although there are about 525,000 lively DACA recipients, only about 10,000 were receiving health insurance on the marketplaces before the policy change, according to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But critics of the Trump administration’s recent rules say participation in the program would enhance as more people learned about their eligibility.
However, DACA recipients in 19 states have been blocked from markets due to ongoing legal proceedings. More than 20% of all DACA recipients live in just two of these states: Texas (17%) and Florida (4%).
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that supports stricter immigration laws, said DACA was an “abuse of executive power” and should not have made some immigrants eligible for benefits. Changing the rules simply restores the status quo, Vaughan said.
“This was sort of an experiment or an end to our system of legal immigration, established under rules that Congress established to provide amnesty to this particular group,” Vaughan said. “Because it is not a legal status, these people are not legally entitled to certain public benefits, one of which is subsidized health insurance.”
Critics of the change, however, say it is cruel to deprive health care coverage of people who came to the country as children.
“Health care is a basic human right for all of us, regardless of where we were born, how much money we have, what we look like, what language we speak, we should have access to high-quality and affordable care when we need it,” said Isobel Mohyeddin, a policy specialist at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants.
Termination of eligibility is a devastating step backwards not only for DACA recipients, but for immigrant families and communities in general.
– Isobel Mohyeddin, policy associate at the National Immigration Law Center
Mohyeddin and her colleagues examined 433 DACA recipients in 2024, before DACA recipients were eligible for entry into the marketplace. Eighty-one percent had health insurance, the enormous majority through an employer, union or professional association. However, nearly 20% had no coverage, more than double the national uninsured rate of 8%.
Mohyeddin said many DACA recipients without insurance have reported skipping recommended doctor and dentist visits or forgoing prescription refills because they can’t afford them or fear being targeted because of their status.
“Disqualification is a devastating step backwards not only for DACA recipients, but for immigrant families and communities in general,” Mohyeddin said.
Although DACA recipients have only recently been able to purchase insurance on the marketplace, it was a huge step for them toward better health outcomes, said Arline Cruz Escobar, director of health programs at Make the Road New York, a group that provides legal and social services to immigrants.
“We’re seeing a lot of mixed-status households, so I think people are just very confused about what this means for them and their families,” Cruz Escobar said. “We already know that the immigrant community does not have access to sufficient preventive care and screening, so I can only imagine that we will see an increase in the number of chronic diseases or undiagnosed chronic diseases that could have been prevented.”
The impact of the Trump administration’s recent rules on DACA recipients will vary as some states offer other health care options to foreigners.
States will have to decide whether they can afford to provide state-subsidized health care to DACA recipients and other immigrants who no longer qualify for federal aid, said Jessica Altman, executive director of the California exchange Covered California.
California has the most DACA beneficiaries, 147,440. Altman said more than 2,300 of them purchased plans on the California market and will lose coverage. She said many DACA recipients in the state were unaware of their eligibility, and more people would have signed up had the Trump administration not made the policy change.
California provides state-funded health care to all income-eligible immigrants, regardless of legal status. But in June, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a budget that limits that coverage due to budget concerns.
Altman said that in lightweight of federal changes and financial obligations placed on states, California will have to make the same choices as other states when it comes to how and whether to lend a hand DACA recipients with their health care.
“The hard part is that to actually make insurance affordable for the population we’re talking about, you have to fund financial assistance that’s at least somewhat comparable to what’s available in the federal marketplace,” Altman said. “So state dollars are really where the rubber meets the road.”
Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Statisticswhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes Pennsylvania Capital-Star, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
