Child advocates and politicians in five Democratic-led states on Wednesday decried the Trump administration’s move to freeze billions of dollars in child care grants and family assistance, calling it an act of cruel retribution that could do long-term harm to some of the nation’s poorest families.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that it had frozen grants that provide food and child care assistance to low-income residents in New York, California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, saying that it has “serious concerns about widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs” and that the states may be wrongfully providing services to illegal immigrants…