More than 20 states sued the Trump administration on Friday to block a new Department of Homeland Security rule that would give immigration officials wider discretion to decide whether an applicant is likely to become a public charge. The rule is set to take effect on Friday, and the states want a court to stop it before it changes how visa and green card applications are judged.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James led a coalition of 21 states and Washington, D.C., in the challenge, while New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani led a separate lawsuit from cities challenging the same DHS rule. James said the change could let officials weigh an immigrant's use of Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and school meal programs, and she warned that families could avoid asking for help at all if they think a benefit application could hurt an immigration case.
The public charge ground has long allowed the government to deny visas or green cards to applicants it decides are likely to become dependent on government assistance, but the new rule would widen the field of what immigration officials may consider. Under the Biden administration's 2022 rule, officials generally looked only at cash assistance for income maintenance, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Supplemental Security Income, along with government-funded long-term institutionalization. The new DHS rule does not spell out a fixed list of benefits, leaving the standard broader and more open-ended than the one that came before it.
That shift is the point of the fight. James said her office has battled this exact policy before and won, and she argued that the administration is counting on immigrant families to forfeit food assistance, health coverage and other benefits they are legally entitled to receive. The states say that if families pull back from programs because of the rule, they could lose billions of dollars in federal funding, even though most undocumented immigrants are already barred from federal means-tested public benefits except for limited exceptions under federal and state law.
The lawsuit now puts the burden on the courts to decide whether the rule can take effect as scheduled. If judges do not act quickly, immigration officials will be able to use a broader public charge test on Friday, and that alone is likely to chill applications from people living in immigrant families long before any final ruling arrives.
