On a sunlit morning in the forested hills of northeast Oakland, Rosa Maria Carranza, 67, runs a small outdoor preschool where children climb among ferns and redwoods, and she leans forward to steady a three year old while guiding in a Spanish cadence: 'Hold on to that branch,' she said in Spanish.

'You can do it, my love!' Carranza has spent more than three decades caring for children and families, and she believes the forest is an essential classroom.

She had counted on Medicare and Social Security to anchor her retirement after a lifetime of paying into those programs.

She has contributed tens of thousands of dollars into Medicare and Social Security over 24 years, according to her earnings record, and like many who built a life around a solid work history she expected a peaceful aging with health coverage when needed.

Here's What They're Not Telling You About Your Retirement

That expectation now hangs in the balance as federal policy shifts in a direction few anticipated.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed last July by President Donald Trump, barred certain categories of lawfully present immigrants, including temporary protected status holders, refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of domestic violence, trafficking victims, and people with work visas, from Medicare.

Those already enrolled in Medicare will be disenrolled by January 4 as lawmakers seek to curb program costs, insisting that taxpayer dollars should not subsidize the health care of immigrants who are in the United States without formal authorization.

Trump did not mince the political calculus.

This Could Be the Most Important Video Gun Owners Watch All Year

"Democrats want Illegal Aliens, many of them VIOLENT CRIMINALS, to receive FREE Healthcare," he posted on Truth Social two months after he signed the bill into law. "We cannot let this happen!"

Those affected do have legal status, a fact that raises questions about fairness and the scope of federal aid.

Carranza fears she could also lose legal permission to live in the United States if temporary protected status for Salvadorans is ended.

If that happened, she would lose legal residency, risking time in an immigration detention center or deportation.

"This is like a horror movie, a complete nightmare," Carranza said. "This is not how I imagined getting old."

She left El Salvador in 1991 during a brutal civil war, leaving behind three young children to earn money to send home. She overstayed her visa until 2001, when she qualified for temporary protected status after two earthquakes struck El Salvador, killing more than 1,100 people and displacing 1.3 million.

Temporary protected status, or TPS, was created in 1990 to allow people from nations facing armed conflict or disasters to live and work in the United States when returning home posed risks.

Carranza studied at City College of San Francisco, where she earned a degree in child development, while working overnight shifts babysitting newborns and later substitute teaching in public schools in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for her children’s schooling in El Salvador and for her own classes at City College of San Francisco, where she earned a degree in child development.

She cared for dozens of three year olds, four year olds and five year olds who gazed in awe as they uncovered little treasures buried in the redwood forest of the Oakland park where she co founded Escuelita del Bosque, a Spanish immersion preschool that teaches children outdoors.

The trade off was supposed to be a peaceful retirement, but Congress narrowed Medicare eligibility to citizens, lawful permanent residents, Cuban and Haitian nationals, and people covered under the Compacts of Free Association, agreements between the United States and Pacific island nations.