Yolibeth’s 4-year-old daughter scrambled headfirst onto a cushy leather love seat at their home near New Orleans and pushed a hairbrush into the hands of Miriam Romero, a health coordinator who works with the family. Romero placed the girl in her lap and started brushing her dark hair.
Yolibeth, a 38-year-old single mother who moved to South Louisiana from Honduras 15 years ago, watched them, smiling. The daughter is the youngest of five children living in this mixed-status household. Yolibeth and her two oldest kids don’t have legal immigration status, but the other three — ages 4, 9, and 13 — were born in the U.S. and are citizens.
All of her U.S.-born kids were enrolled in Medicaid at birth, which made it affordable for her to take them to the doctor for regular checkups when they were little. Her oldest two, ages 15 and 17, have never had health insurance, so Yolibeth relies on low-cost community clinics when she can afford it.
But now she worries that healthcare access for all of her children is slipping away. Yolibeth has been waiting for months to hear whether any of her children’s Medicaid renewal applications has been approved. She fears they will be denied because of a new Louisiana law targeting noncitizen Medicaid enrollees, even though she isn’t applying for herself. She worries particularly about her 4-year-old’s access to routine care and required childhood vaccines.
“ I cannot access the same services, and so my child is not getting what she needs to grow healthy,” Yolibeth said in Spanish as her daughter giggled on the love seat.
Verite News and KFF Health News agreed to not use Yolibeth’s full name, because she is worried about repercussions related to her immigration status.
Romero (left) welcomes a community member to Familias Unidas en Acción’s office in New Orleans in April. (Christiana Botic/Verite News and CatchLight Local/Report for America)
Romero, who works for a local immigrant advocacy group, Familias Unidas en Acción, said that in a single week she received calls from eight immigrant families who had been denied after applying for Medicaid on behalf of children who are citizens.
“Because of the law that passed in Louisiana, children are losing their Medicaid every day,” Romero said in Spanish. “The more time that goes by, the more children are impacted by it.”
Romero said that all children from mixed-status families are likely to be denied Medicaid by the end of the year.
Missing Out on Care
Nationally, many immigrants said they skipped or delayed healthcare last year, citing issues including costs, struggles finding services, and fears about their or a family member’s immigration status, according to polling by KFF and The New York Times. Immigrants without legal status were the most likely to skip or delay care for themselves or their children. An increasing number of immigrants avoided applying for programs like Medicaid, too scared to risk dra