EXCLUSIVE — President Donald Trump‘s Department of Housing and Urban Development is giving every public housing authority in the country 30 days to share citizenship status of tenants or risk losing their federal funding.
By law, every PHA is required to share eligibility information, including citizenship status, with HUD. Section 214 of the Housing and Community Development Act specifically bars illegal immigrants from public housing programs. However, two senior HUD officials, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive information, tell the Washington Examiner that a significant number have either not shared citizenship information with the government, or were simply never collecting that information in the first place.
“I bet Biden HUD didn’t do anything on collecting citizenship info since they supported current [regulations] that allow illegals to be in mixed-status housing, so they wouldn’t have wanted to know those numbers in the first place,” one HUD official explained.
The letter itself, a draft of which was reviewed by the Washington Examiner Wednesday afternoon, will first be sent to the Washington, D.C. PHA, as the president continues his push to address violent crime and “beautify” the district. But HUD also plans to send the notice to each of the more than 3,000 PHAs across the country.
The letter gives each PHA 30 days from the receipt of the notice to fulfill the following six requests:
1. Identify all “mixed family” units, all units “by one or more individuals who do not contend that they have immigration status,” and any beneficiaries granted assistance without verifying immigration status
2. Provide the full names and mailing addresses of all tenants identified in Request 1, along with any social security numbers, alien administration numbers, alien file numbers, and proof of citizenship or legal immigration status
3. Provide any “spreadsheet, analysis, or other prepared or gathered data concerning the number and/or location of tenants with ineligible immigrations status in all Public Housing covered programs”
4. Provide any documentation of a specific PHA’s compliance with federal code regarding immigrant program eligibility
5. Provide names and full mailing address of any tenant found to have “misrepresented either his or her citizenship, national, or eligible immigration status”
6. Provide a “full tenant file” associated with any positive hits on requests 1 or 5
HUD Secretary Scott Turner specifically wrote in the letter that the administration “will leverage all available enforcement actions against entities who do not comply with the request for citizenship information, including but not limited to, examination of HUD funding and/or evaluation of PHA program eligibility.”
HUD signed a data-sharing agreement with the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year. While White House officials dispute that the agreement between HUD and DHS was specifically signed to facilitate deportations, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told the Washington Examiner that the “entire government will work together to identify abuse and exploitation of public benefits and make sure those in this country illegally are not receiving federal benefits or other financial incentives to stay illegally.”
“The Biden Administration prioritized illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens taxpayer-funded housing at the expense of Americans. Not anymore,” she said in a statement. “If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over.”
Furthermore, Turner, in an April letter, underscored to housing assistance stakeholders that those programs “are strictly reserved for the American people.”
“President Trump’s Executive Order reinforces the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA, P.L. 104-193), which unequivocally prohibits illegal aliens from receiving certain federal public benefits, including many forms of assistance provided under HUD programs,” he wrote at the time.
“Recently, I directed HUD senior leadership to review our programs and institute mechanisms that can ensure that HUD programs are compliant with President Trump’s Executive Order,” Turner continued. “For example, going forward, grant agreements will include language that will require compliance with Executive Order 14218, and the Department will take steps to ensure that Federal resources are not used to support ‘sanctuary’ policies of State and local jurisdictions that actively prevent federal authorities from deporting illegal aliens.”
After federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department and deploying hundreds of National Guard troops across the district earlier this month, Trump also signed an executive order on Monday directing HUD to “investigate any non-compliance with the crime-prevention and safety requirements of HUD agreements by the District of Columbia Housing Authority or any landlord in the District of Columbia.”
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The order clarified that the investigations will also consider provisions of housing agreements to ensure they comply with safety standards set by HUD and “restrict tenants who engage in criminal activity,” including “drug distribution, violent criminal activity, and domestic violence.”
Turner, as the HUD secretary, is required to report the findings of those investigations to the attorney general, and federal law enforcement authorities, as well as the District’s housing authority and police department, as needed, according to the order.