Across the nation, vulnerable Americans are facing the possibility of losing critical assistance as Congress considers deep cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to fund expensive and cruel immigration enforcement that will separate families. Last week, the House narrowly passed the unfortunately named “Big Beautiful Bill,” a budget reconciliation package that is anything but “beautiful.” As the Senate considers what to do, Illinois residents need to understand what they’ll be losing if this dangerous legislation comes to pass.

If passed, millions of Illinois children and families could lose their healthcare coverage over the next ten years. Without Medicaid to help cover costs, people will forgo care for chronic conditions and end up in emergency rooms, or worse. 

We must call on our Senators to vehemently oppose this bill. Not only will it cost human lives, but it perpetuates harmful narratives about Latinos and immigrants, who actually make vast cultural and economic contributions to our country and state.

For Latinos, the consequences are especially severe. Around a fifth of the 3.4 million Illinois residents covered by Medicaid are Latino. Over half of Latino children in Illinois are covered by Medicaid. Latinos also have the highest rates of being uninsured – a fact especially true for children with foreign-born parents, who are more than twice as likely to live without health insurance.

Like Medicaid, SNAP is a lifeline for millions. The proposed $300 billion reduction targeted at the Thrifty Food Plan, a 2021 expansion program that served primarily Black and Latino enrollees, is expected to result in some or total loss of coverage for almost 2 million people in Illinois alone, 60% of whom live in families with children.

The House is expected to vote on the budget reconciliation bill soon, but there’s still time to do something!

Urge your U.S. Representative to oppose this dangerous bill, which slashes funding for vital programs to instead supercharge mass deportations and the separation of immigrant families without due process.
Here are TWO actions you can take right NOW:
1. Find and contact your Representative’s office
2. Join the American Immigration Council and sign on to this quick action alert!

If the Trump administration has its way, these funds will be siphoned off to supercharge mass deportations, immigrant detention, and miles of border wall construction. This carries a price tag of approximately $150 billion – almost as much as the US spent on immigration enforcement for the decades between 1986 and 2012. House Republicans claim that this move will ensure that “more money is put back into hard working Americans’ wallets…by ending taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants…so that it is available for those who need it, and ending waste, fraud, and abuse…” Sound familiar? 

These sentiments build on a long American tradition of lying and exaggerating in order to scapegoat minority and immigrant communities to cut vital benefits. In the 1970s, assistance agencies used false metrics to explicitly accuse “the Mexican alien” as “the major problem” with benefit use. For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations have weaponized these dangerous and false narratives to justify rolling back public benefits programs.

Playing on a continuation of this harmful discourse, Congressional Republicans want to mandate work requirements and frequent eligibility checks for those on SNAP and Medicaid. In fact, 92% of adults under 65 on Medicaid are already working. And most Latinos are not on Medicaid because they’re unemployed – actually, Latinos work more than any other racial or ethnic group with a workforce participation rate of 80% for men and 63% for women. They are also more likely to be employed in industries that offer fewer worker benefits and protections, leaving many without health insurance. Stringent work requirements don’t raise already-high employment rates, but merely push people into even worse financial situations and perpetuate stereotypes that people on public assistance must be abusing it.

Also, undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for most federal benefits, despite paying billions of dollars in local, state, and federal taxes per year. Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, there is virtually zero evidence that “millions” of undocumented immigrants are receiving Medicaid or SNAP. This claim is blatantly false. The bill also includes a provision that would reduce the federal matching rate for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion to states—including Illinois—that use their own funds to provide health insurance to immigrants without documentation.  Cutting programs like Medicaid and SNAP to overfund immigration enforcement not only hurts the whole of low-income Americans but constitutes a direct attack on Latino communities with racially targeted language. This budget bill displays a willingness to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans for purely political purposes. It is imperative that the Senate stands by Americans in need and puts a stop to this dangerous bill in their vote this month. 

A version of this blog was originally posted as a Letter to the Editor in the Chicago Sun-Times.