Without federal subsidies, Breyanna Rodriguez’s child care bill for her four children would run $4,400 a month, which would eat up most of her husband’s paycheck. With child care assistance, Rodriguez, who lives in Cortland, Illinois, is able to work part-time and take community college classes while she prepares for nursing school.

Now, citing concerns about fraud, the Trump administration has said it will withhold frozen federal child care funding for Illinois and other states while it conducts an extensive review. If she loses her subsidy, Rodriguez said, “I’ll have to drop out of work. I’ll have to drop out of school.”

“I just wish this administration didn’t make such a drastic leap,” she said. If families can’t get child care subsidies. that’s going to impact so many people in so many horrible ways that I don’t think they’re grasping.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on the $12 billion Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes care for 1.4 million children from low-income households, has rattled child care providers and families that rely on the aid money. Citing unspecified allegations of fraud, Trump administration officials are requiring states to provide extra documentation before receiving the money.

It’s unclear if or when child care providers and families like Rodriguez's would feel the pinch.

Child care centers are bracing for scrutiny and possible cuts

The administration announced last week that state officials will be required to provide additional information to receive the federal child care money. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would freeze the funding for child care subsidies until they provided even more exhaustive documentation.

The department said it also would withhold other federal safety net money for those states — California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York — including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which supports low-income parents with children under 18 with direct payments and by providing them with child care.

The administration has not released information about the fraud allegations that prompted the new scrutiny.

HHS said in a statement that it “identified concerns that these benefits intended for American citizens and lawful residents may have been improperly provided to individuals who are not eligible under federal law.”

The actions raised fears of payment delays and disruptions for the beleaguered child care industry, which has been struggling under staff shortages, long waits for subsidy programs and the effects of the Trump administration crackdown on immigration.

Ruth Friedman, who headed the federal Office of Child Care under President Joe Biden, said she was concerned the new requirements would lead to delays in funding, which could immediately endanger child care programs. The information the administration asked for might not be readily available, she said.

Providers say they already face extensive regulations

Already, child care providers comply with extensive regulations to receive federal subsides. Dawn Uribe, who runs Mis Amigos Preschool with several Minnesota locations, said staff have to make sure kids sign in and out with the correct ID, and it can take a month to get paid for services. For years, inspectors have regularly visited to assess their records.

“There’s already so much oversight that goes into this so I don’t really understand how much more they can do,” Uribe said.

Uribe, like other child care providers, stressed how tightly federal funds are in her state, so much so that she’s considering forgoing them altogether, In addition to the administrative burden, child care providers lose money when they enroll children who receive subsidies.

“It’s so much work to accept subsidies from the government,” Uribe said.

Karen DeVos, who runs three childcare facilities in rural northwest Minnesota, is preparing her staff to pull records on the spot in case an investigator shows up unannounced. Daycare centers are regularly subjected to audits and attendance checks, she said.

“If we continue to view every provider as somebody who could be committing fraud, we are going to lose really valuable resources in our child care providers,” DeVos said. “There is only so much stress that people can take and not knowing every single day if somebody is going to knock on your door and accuse you of something is terrifying.”

Beyond official investigators, some providers are wary of amateur sleuths showing up at their doors like Nick Shirley, the right-wing influencer who claimed he’d found rampant fraud at day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis. The Trump administration has cited his viral video in its decision to cut off certain federal funding streams.

Grants provide a lifeline for parents

Even with two incomes, Charity Pallum said she and her husband would not be able to afford child care for their 1-year-old twins. But because of the federal child care subsidies, both Pallum, a teacher, and her husband, who works at a car dealership, are able to work full-time.

If Pallum’s family were to lose that support, her husband might have to stop working, putting a pinch on their family budget.

“I guess our plans are, ’We’re just going to see how this goes,’” said Pallum, a teacher living in Ada, Minnesota.

Pallum said neither she nor her husband want to risk missing paychecks if they lose the child care subsidy.

“We have responsibilities to our families and we have responsibilities to our work, and we want to maintain both,” said Pallum. With federal childcare funds, “we can give our twins a consistent schedule. They do so much for the twins and they do so much for us, just being consistent and being able to live up to our responsibilities as parents and as community members.”

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