Fewer New Jersey families are participating in federal nutrition and health programs, and New Jersey social service providers say they expect the numbers to continue to drop under a new Trump administration plan to deny green cards to immigrants who rely on public assistance.

“The overall unwelcoming sentiment among immigrants nationally has created a backdrop where there’s more fear or more concern, and we have seen and heard directly from partners that families are just pulling out of many resources,” said Carlos Rodriguez, president of the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

The new rule, which the administration announced over the weekend, could affect about 382,000 people a year nationally, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It would penalize those seeking permanent legal residency, or a green card, if they use programs including Medicaid, food stamps or Section 8 rental assistance.

The proposal will be posted in the Federal Register and is subject to a 60-day public comment period.

Immigrants without legal status, and those with non-immigrant visas who are allowed to live in the country temporarily, are already ineligible for many of the federal public benefit programs included in the proposal. Those programs include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; non-emergency Medicaid; Supplemental Security Income, or SSI; and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. But advocates say the new rule will cause confusion and will deter many immigrants who are eligible from seeking critical services.

Rose Cuison Villazor, who teaches immigration policy at Rutgers Law School in Newark, said the policy could have a chilling effect on a variety of residents in New Jersey, including green card applicants and their families, temporary visa holders and undocumented immigrants with U.S.-born children, who may fear being deemed a "public charge."

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“If they have U.S. citizen children who may qualify for those programs, there’s a chilling effect,’’ she said. “If they go seek medical help either for themselves or their children, because they qualify for it, they might be rightfully worried about them being removed from the United States.”

Others said the change was more of a scare tactic and a political move by the administration to please the president's base as the November midterm elections approach.

“The goal of this rule is fear. And the goal of it is pointing the finger at people of color, immigrants, and blaming them for using benefits. That is what the rule is about,’’ said Sonya Schwartz of the National Immigration Law Center. “The problem is that the intent of this rule, even though on paper it might seem a little narrower, is to scare everyone, every immigrant regardless of their status, regardless of their eligibility, and also for them to pull their kids off the programs.”

A spokeswoman for Gov. Phil Murphy, Alyana Alfaro, said Wednesday that the administration's plan “is another example of cruel and unfair targeting of immigrants by the federal government."

"Receiving government benefits should not have an impact on a person’s chances of receiving lawful permanent residency," she said. "The State of New Jersey, the Department of Health, and the Department of Human Services will do everything within their authority to ensure the availability of benefits for all New Jersey residents in need.”

Health clinic sees fewer patients

Reports that the Trump administration was planning to make it tougher for immigrants to receive green cards surfaced during the summer. Since then, there have been reports of fewer immigrants seeking health care and food assistance.

Shilpa Pai, a pediatrician who works at a health clinic in New Brunswick, said the political climate surrounding immigration policy has deterred patients from visiting the clinic. She added that the new rule has only made that worse.

Several of her patients come from mixed-status households in which one or more members are not citizens, Pai said. That could include green card holders or even undocumented parents with U.S.-born children who are legally entitled to food stamps, housing vouchers and health benefits.

Pai said some families with Medicaid have stopped coming to appointments. Other parents bring their children but refuse to sign up for food stamps and other programs, even if it's the only way they can get healthy meals.

"They express fear in going because of this 'public charge' issue even though, like I said, they're qualified for these services," said Pai, who serves on the state advisory council for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, referred to as WIC. "It's just going to perpetuate food insecurity and lack of access to healthy food, and it's obviously going to worsen their medical state."

Program participation drops

In New Jersey, 373,167 households received SNAP benefits in June, 5.5 percent fewer than a year earlier, according to statistics published on the New Jersey Department of Human Services website.

Barbara Scholz, the director of advocacy and programs at Fulfill, a food bank serving Ocean and Monmouth counties, said the decline is due in part to stricter immigration enforcement. She said Fulfill has seen a 30 percent drop from last year in SNAP applications among households with immigrants.

“They didn’t apply, or withdrew their applications, because they are already fearful of repercussions,’’ Scholz said. “We are worried that the new ruling may exacerbate this further and result in even more people not using SNAP benefits in order to protect their status."

The WIC program, which provides nutrition for low-income pregnant women and children under the age of 5, is not supposed to be affected by the new rule, Pai said. Nonetheless, she said participation in that program is down as well.

"There's a nervousness and distrust with anything that has to do with any organized system," she said.

Mayor Hector Lora of Passaic said fewer WIC participants were reporting to their appointments in the city in the weeks after President Donald Trump took office last year, but he said this week that the numbers are back up. He said the city has been informing residents about the program, and that he wasn’t sure how the new rule would affect those numbers in the future.

“We have worked really hard to instill confidence in our residents when it comes to services,’’ he said. “It continues to be a challenge.”

Email: alvarado@northjersey.com and ssolis@gannettnj.com