Democratic mayors from major U.S. cities have sued the Trump administration following the federal government’s attempt to deny green cards and visas to immigrants who may become financially dependent on U.S. welfare programs while in the country.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Monday that New York; Chicago; the city and county of San Francisco; Santa Clara County, California; Seattle; King County, Washington; and the Public Rights Project had filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow over the government’s new public charge rule.
“The new public charge rule seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades,” Mamdani said in a statement. “New Yorkers will be afraid to see a doctor or ask for help they are legally entitled to. That fear will not stop at the families that the federal government is targeting. Families who remain fully eligible for benefits will feel a chilling effect, and all New Yorkers will pay for it.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and is in addition to a recent legal challenge by New York Attorney General Letitia James and other states, cities, and counties suing the Trump administration over its changes to screening immigrants.
During a Monday press conference, Mamdani accused the Trump administration of undertaking a “campaign of violence and terror” aimed at immigrants.
“ICE has broken into our neighbors’ homes, work sites and schools,” Mamdani said. “And it has targeted those who have come to our country in search of refuge and in search of opportunity. These actions are an assault on our civic fabric, on our shared values. And no matter how much destruction they have already caused, it continues.”
The DHS announced in July that USCIS would consider green card applicants’ use of welfare benefits when deciding whether to grant permanent legal status, so as to avoid approving people who could become a “public charge” to the government and taxpayers. USCIS would take into account a person’s reliance on Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance as factors when deciding whether to grant individuals legal status.
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A spokesperson for the DHS dismissed the effort as misdirected and an “ideological contortion by left-wing leaders to justify their defrauding of the American taxpayer at the hands of illegal criminals.”
“Let’s get this straight, sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” the DHS spokesperson said in a Tuesday statement. “We’re shaking in our boots over this supposedly terrible outcome. DHS has heard for months from the trusted journalists at CNN and others that illegal aliens weren’t using these very same welfare programs. So, which is it?”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
