President Donald Trump appears to be quietly reviving a plan from his first term that would kick families of mixed immigration status out of public housing and prohibit them from receiving most forms of rental assistance, escalating his administration’s attacks on access to public services for immigrant communities.

Last Wednesday, the Trump administration posted a proposed rule for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA. While details were scant on the website, the language mirrors an abandoned 2019 proposal that would have increased documentation requirements for federal housing assistance — and likely forced tens of thousands of mixed-status families to choose between homelessness, financial ruin, or family separation.

Undocumented people are currently ineligible for most federally funded rental assistance programs, but in families where some people have legal status, members who qualify can receive pro-rated housing assistance, allowing the whole family to live together in public housing. Under the proposed 2019 rule, those families would become ineligible for most federally funded housing assistance programs if at least one member of the family is disqualified by their immigration status.

Housing and immigration experts told The Intercept that the new proposal looks like a revival of that attempted rule.

“The choice that families will be faced with,” said Anna Bailey, a senior analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “is going to be staying together but losing the assistance that makes housing affordable — putting them at risk of eviction and instability and homelessness — or splitting up … that’s a really agonizing decision.”

The Washington Post reported in April that the Trump........

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