A Trump administration revival of a policy giving ICE agents the power to punish green card holders for lawfully using public benefits will have “catastrophic” affects on families, a new lawsuit charges.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, 22 other states and the District of Coumbia are asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to block measure.
“New Yorkers do not have to fear that seeking help today could jeopardize their – or their family members’ – immigration status in the future,” James said in a statement.
A separate lawsuit has also been filed by a coalition of cities led by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, along with Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Clara County, Seattle, and King County.
A similar rule during Trump’s first term caused benefit disenrollment rates as high as 35 percent among mixed-status families, and as high as 60 percent among refugees.
The DHS predicts that this “chilling effect” will cost states $4.05 billion annually in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding and $1 billion annually in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding nationwide.
At issue is a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “public charge” rule that would give individual immigration officers sweeping discretion to deny green cards based on nearly any use of public benefits.
States and local governments that administer these programs will bear direct costs, from new communications to staff training to information technology changes needed to manage the disruption, the coalition asserts.
“Hardworking families should not be forced to go without the support they need because they fear asking for assistance will get them deported,” said James.
“This rule preys on that fear and counts on families forfeiting the food assistance, health care coverage, and other public benefits to which they are legally entitled.”
The administration let immigration officials deny green cards and visas to applicants who used non-cash public benefits like food assistance, Medicaid, and housing vouchers, during his first administration, prompting multiple legal challenges.
The Biden administration stopped defending the 2019 rule in court and implemented its own narrower guidelines focused strictly on primary cash assistance, attempting to reverse the prior restrictions.
When the Trump administration introduced a similar rule in 2020, James and a similar coalition successfully sued to block the measure, and the ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
“My office fought this exact policy once before and won, and we are leading the nation to ensure the Trump administration cannot inflict this harm on families, again,” James said.
The coalitions argue the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act by exceeding statutory authority and forcing families to abandon essential health and food benefits out of fear.
“The new public charge rule seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades. New Yorkers will be afraid to see a doctor or ask for help they are legally entitled to,” said James.
“Families who remain fully eligible for benefits will feel a chilling effect, and all New Yorkers will pay for it,” said Mamdani in a statement.
For over 140 years, the United States has defined a “public charge” as someone likely to become primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence.
Under Biden, the federal government issued a rule limiting public charge determinations to cash assistance for income maintenance or long-term institutionalization at government expense.
The Trump administration’s new rule, taking effect Sept. 18, would let immigration officers count nearly any public benefit, used for any length of time, against an applicant. The rule also includes benefits legally used by family members, even if the family member is a U.S. citizen.
ICE officers could count a child’s participation in a school’s free lunch program against their noncitizen parent’s application for citizenship.
“There is no clear limit on which benefits, or how much use, count against an applicant, leaving families to guess which forms of routine, lawful assistance might put their immigration status at risk,” according to the a media release.
“The administration has acknowledged, and even celebrated, that the fear and confusion the new rule would create could cause immigrant families, including U.S. citizen children, to disenroll from benefits to which they are legally entitled,” it states.
The lawsuit asserts that the new rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it is arbitrary and capricious, exceeds DHS’s statutory authority, and departs from the longstanding meaning of the public charge provision established by Congress.
Joining Attorney General James in filing this lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania.
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”