Undocumented immigrants will no longer be able to access Head Start, the federal preschool program for low-income children, under a notice Thursday from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Head Start, a project of the Johnson-era war on poverty, marks its 60th birthday this year, and about 15,000 children in Washington statenreceive its early learning and family support services.

The move echoes the administration’s hard-line stance on immigration by expanding which federal programs undocumented immigrants can’t use. And it adds another layer of uncertainty for programs, which this year have faced issues from accessing payments to the reduction of the federal workforce overseeing and supporting Head Start.

In the wake of the notice, Head Start providers are left with questions about what they must do and to whom the measure applies.

Jill Brenner, early learning and family services director at Kitsap Community Resources, which has 165 kids in Head Start and Early Head Start programs, said that they have not received any guidance from the department about how to implement the requirement.

Brenner compared the lack of guidance to an announcement in March saying the Office of Head Start wouldn’t approve funding for any training or technical help that promoted or participated in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“It's kind of dropping the bombshell and then letting programs deal with the fallout,” Brenner said, “But not providing the guidance that we need to be able to operate and make decisions on whether or not we enroll children or don't enroll children.”

She said their program will wait until they have clarification and guidance from the agency.

HHS said in its announcement that it would issue further guidance to programs that are affected “to ensure full implementation.”

Collecting information about students’ or families’ immigration status has never been required, and Brenner said they’ve never done so. They can use information like medical records to verify the age of children they’re serving, she added.

One key question is whether the requirement applies only to children enrolled in the program, or whether parents will be affected. The Head Start model involves parents and families in their child’s education and supports families in finding work, housing and other services.

Advocates are concerned the notice could have a broader chilling effect on the community — that families may withdraw from the program out of fear of being targeted, even if their children still qualify for services.

“Those kids can show up in K-12, but they won’t have had the kind of foundation that they need,” said Katy Warren, deputy director of the state’s Head Start association. “And it’s really counterintuitive, in terms of our overall goals for our economy and our future here in the United States.”

In a release Thursday, HHS said it was walking back a Clinton-era interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. That interpretation, the department said, “improperly extended certain public benefits to illegal aliens.”

“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “Today’s action changes that — it restores integrity to federal social programs, enforces the rule of law, and protects vital resources for the American people.”

The department said that early estimates suggest the move means American citizens could receive up to $374 million in additional services through Head Start.

Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families at HHS, said the new interpretation “puts American families first by ensuring taxpayer-funded benefits are reserved for eligible individuals.”

Plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over its handling of Head Start, including Washington’s Head Start association, said that if the notice takes effect, they plan to amend their lawsuit and challenge the new requirement in court.

Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, one of the lawyers on the case, said that the administration was “unlawfully attempting to rewrite” the law to make it harder for kids to access critical early education.

“No agency – including HHS – has ever defined early education as a restricted ‘federal public benefit,’” she said in a statement. “The Head Start Act clearly states it is an education program with the purpose to ‘promote the school readiness of low-income children,’ and includes both statutory and regulatory criteria which impose no eligibility restriction based on immigration status.”

Thursday’s notice also affects other HHS programs, including grants for mental health services and substance use disorder treatment, prevention and recovery support service programs.

The new notice announced Thursday takes effect Monday, when it is slated to be published in the Federal Register.

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