This story has been republished with permission from Tennessee Lookout. Read the original story here.
As a deadline looms for about 400 sick and disabled kids to be reported to immigration officials because they receive public healthcare benefits, advocates on Tuesday urged Gov. Bill Lee to intervene.
“Today we’re calling on Gov. Lee to take the steps needed to protect these children,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.
The Tennessee Department of Health has warned parents their children will be reported to a state immigration enforcement division after June 30 as a condition of continued care in a public safety-net program reserved for kids with disabilities and life-threatening illnesses.
Kids in the Children’s Special Services program — about 4,600 statewide, including the 400 impacted immigrant children — are only eligible if they suffer from serious and chronic illnesses and disabilities, including cancer, spina bifida and cerebral palsy.
In letters to parents this month, the health department cited recently-enacted Tennessee law requiring immigrants without legal status who receive public benefits to be reported to the Tennessee Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division, an agency established in 2025 to oversee “collaboration with federal immigration agencies.”
Related: Doctors file suit against Tennessee plan to report sick, disabled immigrant kids to authorities
But on Tuesday, the Republican lawmaker who co-sponsored the new legislation seemed displeased that it was being applied to sick and disabled children.
“There has been discussion on this bill,” Sen. Ed Jackson, who represents Jackson, Tenn. wrote via text Tuesday. “Still looking into options to possibly adjust or make changes.”
The governor on Tuesday did not respond to questions from the Lookout.
“Tennessee is required to administer the Children’s Special Services Program in accordance with applicable federal requirements and state law,” read a statement last week from the governor’s office.
In a press conference held Tuesday, advocates for the affected children said parents were being confronted with an “excruciating decision.”
Continuing to receive critical care through the program could result in the Tennessee immigration office reporting them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for detention or deportation, placing their child’s life at risk.
Withdrawing their child from the healthcare program providing ongoing specialist care, ventilators, feeding tubes, therapies and hospital care also places their child’s life at risk.
“It is an impossible choice that no family who is facing this kind of situation should have to face,” Sherman Luna said.
“We know that Tennesseans and Americans across the country don’t want to see little children be subjected to this kind of denial and families being given this false choice.”
Sherman Luna also called out leaders and employees of the state health department implementing the policy for their “lack of courage.”
“I think this is one of those things, where if you are being told to issue this directive, you should resign and you should look inside your moral compass.”
One former health department official called on Lee to issue an executive order “clarifying the implementation of this law and preventing families from being forced to choose between obtaining health care for their child and risking deportation.”
Tennessee stands alone in implementing immigration verification on children enrolled in Children’s Special Services, which is funded through a federal block grant that flows to each state, according to Dr. Jill Obremskey, a pediatrician and former medical director at the Tennessee Department of Health.
“If this policy remains unchanged, there will undoubtedly be interruptions to the critical care they require,” said Obremskey. “Those interruptions will lead to worsening health for many children, more emergency room visits, more hospitalizations, more suffering — and for some children, death.”
“I ask Tennesseans and our governor to remember that these are not policy abstractions. I call on your sense of humanity. These are children that will be impacted,” she added.
Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center, told reporters that her organization intends to file a legal challenge this week in an effort to halt the action.
Immigrant children without legal status are not eligible for Medicaid, Johnson noted. Children’s Special Services is the sole safety net for children who need life-sustaining care and therapies their families cannot otherwise afford.
“We want our leaders to actually focus on real problems, real solutions and not pick on children on ventilators and on feeding tubes and who need chemo,” Johnson said. “In thinking through what Gov. Lee could do, it just seemed like a no-brainer he would step in and say this: these kids deserve a chance to grow up.”
Rev. Jeff Brown, pastor of Woodmont Hills Church in Nashville, appealed to the governor’s Christian faith.
“I can see how these policies might pander to the preferences of the sitting president,” he said. “I can see how they might even garner some favor among a particular part of a political base in an election year, but they do nothing to embody the way of Jesus in the world. So this is a moment to step back. It is a moment where we call on Gov. Lee to use the power entrusted to him to do right.”
Advocates have also disputed the department’s interpretation of the law requiring the immigration status reporting of children.
The legislation, which Lee signed into law May 22, requires applicants for public benefits to provide proof of citizenship or legal immigration status only if they are at least 18 years old. It was part of a package of bills targeting immigrants unveiled earlier this year by the state’s GOP after a series of meetings between Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton and White House advisor Stephen Miller, an architect of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns. Tennessee Republicans called the slate of legislation a “model for the nation.”
The law also includes language requiring local health departments to “report individuals and all identifying information about such individuals who are not lawfully present” who receive public benefits to the state’s Centralized Immigration Enforcement Bureau. Failure to report comes with criminal penalties for public employees.
The advocates’ press conference, done virtually, also included remarks from a mother of a 12-year-old child with cerebral palsy and epilepsy who receives ongoing care through Children’s Special Services. She issued a plea.
“I make an urgent appeal to your sensitivity and commitment so that you put your hand on your heart and help us stop this law that affects us so much,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified to protect her family. “The life and health of our children is not a game.”
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