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The Pros, Cons, and Hidden Costs
Wednesday, September 16, 1:30PM

New York City and state Attorney General Letitia James filed parallel federal lawsuits Monday challenging a Trump administration rule and accompanying guidance that would expand the public benefits immigration officers can consider when deciding certain green-card applications.

The rule is scheduled to take effect Friday, and city officials argue it unlawfully allows immigration officers to count some green-card applicants’ use of benefits they are legally eligible to receive against them, while creating a much broader chilling effect that could frighten other immigrants and their family members away from health care, food assistance and other programs.

“None of this is abstract. People could die as a result of these changes,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a City Hall press conference announcing the challenges.

Mamdani cited an estimate that premature mortality could rise in New York City immigrant communities under the new policy. The city’s complaint attributes that projection to a study by city Health Department researchers, which estimated premature mortality could increase by 4.4% to 10.6% over five years among New York City immigrants under 65 and children who are U.S. citizens living in mixed-status households

What changes under the new rule

The fight centers on the federal government’s longstanding “public charge” test.

Federal immigration law allows the government to find certain noncitizens inadmissible if officials determine they are “likely at any time to become a public charge.” The law does not define the term, but requires immigration officers to consider factors including an applicant’s age, health, family status, finances, education and skills.

For people applying from within the United States to become lawful permanent residents, commonly known as green-card holders, USCIS says the test applies unless they fall into an exempt category. Refugees, asylees, Special Immigrant Juveniles and several other humanitarian categories are among those exempt.

Under the new USCIS guidance, officers can also consider an applicant’s use of means-tested public benefits.

For benefits received before Sept. 18, USCIS says officers will consider only public cash assistance for income maintenance and long-term institutionalization at government expense. For benefits received beginning Friday, the agency says officers can consider “any and all” means-tested benefits, listing cash assistance, housing assistance, food stamps and financial aid for college among its examples.

The guidance applies to covered green-card applications filed on or after Sept. 18. The guidance applies to covered green-card applications filed on or after Sept. 18. USCIS says officers will review all relevant evidence and make decisions case by case based on the totality of an applicant’s circumstances.

DHS rejects New York’s challenge

USCIS says the updated guidance aligns with congressional intent that immigrants in the United States be self-sufficient and not dependent on taxpayer-funded government benefits.

DHS, responding to questions from amNewYork, did not directly address the lawsuits’ claims that the policy exceeds the department’s legal authority, nor did it answer whether implementation would proceed Friday as scheduled.

Instead, a spokesperson accused “sanctuary states” of being “terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs.”

“We’re shaking in our boots over this supposedly terrible outcome,” the spokesperson said, accusing “left-wing leaders” of “defrauding the American taxpayer.”

The public-charge test at issue, however, is an immigration admissibility test, not a rule determining who is eligible for public benefits. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, while other noncitizens may qualify depending on their immigration status. USDA also says eligible members of a household can receive SNAP even when another household member is ineligible. 

Federal Medicaid generally requires U.S. citizenship or a qualifying immigration status, although limited federal coverage is available for emergency medical treatment for otherwise eligible people who cannot receive full Medicaid because of their immigration status.

New York City’s lawsuit argues the administration is unlawfully abandoning a much narrower understanding of “public charge” that, the plaintiffs say, has historically meant being primarily dependent on the government for subsistence.

Corporation Counsel Steve Banks called the new policy “even more harmful than the 2019 rule,” referring to the first Trump administration’s previous effort to broaden the public-charge standard.

The 2019 rule identified specific noncash programs, including SNAP, certain Medicaid coverage and federal housing assistance, and established thresholds for how their use would be weighed. The city argues the new policy goes further by allowing officers to consider any means-tested benefit without similarly defined limits.

Although the 2019 rule took effect in 2020 after higher courts stayed several injunctions, a federal judge later vacated it. After President Joe Biden took office, DHS dropped its appeal in March 2021, allowing that ruling to take effect, and formally removed the 2019 regulations.

City says the chilling effect has already begun

City officials say those fears are already changing people’s behavior.

Its complaint says NYC Health + Hospitals frontline workers have reported instances in which people declined to enroll in benefits or services because of fears surrounding public charge. New York City community health centers have reported an increase in missed and canceled appointments, while the Department of Social Services has seen a decline in SNAP enrollment among households headed by a noncitizen since the final rule was issued, according to the filing.

Based on the federal government’s own projected chilling effect, NYC Health + Hospitals estimates that more than 16,000 of its patients enrolled in Medicaid or Child Health Plus could disenroll because of concerns about the rule, according to the city’s complaint.

Immigrant advocates said similar fears are already reaching their offices.

Arlene Cruz Escobar, director of health programs at Make the Road New York, said green-card holders have asked whether they should drop public health insurance, while parents have questioned whether receiving SNAP for a child who is a U.S. citizen could hurt a pending green-card application.

In one case, Cruz Escobar said, the mother of a child who is a U.S. citizen and has a disability asked whether she should end the child’s Medicaid coverage because she feared immigration consequences. She also described a guardian raising similar concerns about Medicaid for a child with Special Immigrant Juvenile status, a category USCIS says is exempt from the public-charge test.

“These concerns are not hypothetical,” Cruz Escobar said.

Mamdani urged New Yorkers not to give up benefits without first seeking legal advice.

“Nothing about your or a family member’s eligibility to access benefits and services has changed,” he said. “If you rely on SNAP, Medicaid, or programs like WIC and TANF, do not disenroll without first seeking advice from a trusted legal provider.”

The city is planning community forums, trainings and clinics and is training outreach workers on the changes. The lawsuit says DSS expects to train about 9,000 agency employees and another 10,000 provider staff who work directly with applicants or recipients of programs including Medicaid and SNAP.

Two lawsuits target the same policy

New York City is joined in its lawsuit by Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Clara County, Seattle and King County, Washington. James is leading a separate challenge brought by 22 states and the District of Columbia, with New York joined by California, Illinois, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

James said her office asked local governments to bring their own parallel case because the potential effects of the rule required what she called an “all-of-government response.”

The city subsequently asked the Manhattan federal court to treat the two cases as related, saying they challenge the same DHS rule and USCIS guidance and raise substantially overlapping legal and factual issues.

The city coalition raises three claims under the federal Administrative Procedure Act. It argues that DHS exceeded its statutory authority, that the rule and guidance are arbitrary and capricious and, alternatively, that USCIS imposed substantive requirements through its guidance without going through required notice-and-comment procedures.

The city is asking the court to vacate the rule and guidance and block their implementation.

James said the new approach gives immigration officers substantially more discretion than the 2019 rule and fails to provide clear enough guidance about how that discretion should be exercised.

“Cruelty is the point. Having a chilling effect on immigrants is the point,” James said. “Letting individuals know that they are not welcomed here is the point. Immigration animus is the point.”

James said her office is also seeking to have the rule vacated and urged the judge to act before Friday.

“We won, and we intend to win again,” she said, referring to New York’s earlier challenge to the Trump administration’s public-charge policy.

Why are New York City taxi drivers dying on the job? 

A 52-year-old cabbie was found dead in his car Friday night — the third death of its kind in as many months, prompting the union representing the city’s for-hire-vehicle drivers to demand action on Monday. 

The union — the NY Taxi Workers Alliance — said that the driver, who it declined to identify out of respect for his family, pulled over after making a drop-off in Manhattan’s West Village between 5 and 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11.

“He started work around 2:30 that afternoon and all the friends, they talk to each other, so they inform each other when they’re starting their shift,” said the union’s executive director, Bhairavi Desai, of how he and his other driver friends communicate throughout the day.

“After the rush hour, everyone’s trying to just contact each other, maybe have a break together, and they just couldn’t find him,” she added. “He wasn’t answering.”

The driver’s friends tracked down his cab to where he parked near the corner of 7th Avenue and Charles Street around 11 p.m. Friday night, Desai said. They were able to find him by contacting the broker for his taxi medallion, who used a GPS locator attached to the cab’s meter to trace it to the West Village corner.

“The broker found that he had done a drop between 5 and 5:30, and the car had not moved since then,” she said. “So then the friends drove there immediately and got there around 11, and that’s when they saw that he was just inside the car.”

Desai said the driver’s friends noticed upon arriving that the cab was on with the air conditioning running. She added that they then immediately called 911.

Emergency services personnel arrived and found the driver unresponsive, according to the NYPD. They tried to resuscitate him but were unable to, pronouncing him dead at the scene.

The alliance will hold a memorial for the driver on Tuesday morning at the West Village intersection where he was found.

Taxi drivers need self-care, union rep says

The driver’s cause of death is still being determined by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to the NYPD. However, Desai said, the speculation is that he had a heart attack.

The driver, who lives on Long Island, is survived by his wife and 10-year-old twin children, Desai said. He has been a cabbie for many years, having purchased his taxi medallion with two of his friends in 2023.

The death comes after the union late last month held a vigil to honor one of the other taxi drivers who recently died in their cabs over the summer.

The 73-year-old driver, Gustave Bertrand Adjeli Yao, known in Harlem as 73-year-old Richard Coulibaly, was found by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to have died from natural causes. Coulibaly died on July 2, during an extreme heat wave, which included the city’s first 100-degree day in over a decade.

The union held a separate memorial this past Friday for the other driver who died in their cab over the summer: Khalifa Siva.

Desai said Siva was diabetic and was found holding his insulin while pulled over inside his cab on the Henry Hudson Parkway near 81st Street in Upper Manhattan in late August.

When it comes to the connection between all three deaths, Desai said she believes they stem from drivers having to make fewer trips over longer hours with less time for breaks.

“They’re just spending less time, even during the shift, taking care of themselves,” she said. “Less time to go to the doctor and get your medicine and just properly take care of yourself. You’re supposed to work the job. The job’s not supposed to work you.”

A fellow cab driver named Wain Chin expressed a similar sentiment in a WhatsApp message shared with amNewYork.

“Too many of us put in long hours of work to cope with the rising cost of operation and living,” Chin said. “The same time app companies are trimming the compensation for our work. It is so much one body can take.”

Desai said the best solution is “comprehensive economic reform” for the industry that can allow drivers to earn more “without working themselves to death.” Additionally, she said they could use more resources for access to health care.