These particular grants, the administration said, fund illegal immigrants and more. The admin had revoked them earlier this month, saying they also promote other "radical leftwing" priorities, per the Daily Caller.
AFN connected with Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
"It's true that a lot of federal funds have gone to programs that support illegal aliens or very left-wing kinds of projects, and taxpayers certainly are not thrilled about that, and the Trump administration has tried to end that practice," Vaughan divulges.
She said the admin tried to claw back about seven billion dollars in federal grants.
The grants "were going mainly to programs to benefit the kids of migrant farm workers, and these are for remedial education and for English language learning mainly,” explains Vaughan. “And so, the Trump administration decided that those programs should not be funded by taxpayers and tried to rescind the money.”
But last week, that changed.
"Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia – although I am a little surprised why the Washington, D.C. school system has migrant farm workers in it – but they filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to block this cancellation," Vaughan says.
She added a number of Republican senators also protested the decision. The admin relented, and at least for this year, they say they will go ahead and provide the money.
Vaughan thinks it's because it is so late in the summertime.
"Now on the one hand, the states have a good argument too: they're stuck with these kids in the school system, and the kids should be in school. They're trying to make the best of it, and they want to get money from the federal government to address an issue in the schools that is a result of federal policy," states Vaughan.
But on the other hand, Vaughan said she thinks it is a fair question as to why the U.S.is giving visas to migrant families as opposed to migrant farm workers.
"I think we need to recognize that this is a pretty significant cost of allowing farm workers to bring their whole families," Vaughan says.
She concludes by saying all that’s left is to see what happen next year.
