NEW YORK, September 14 — New York City and New York State opened a two-front legal assault on the Trump administration Monday, filing coordinated lawsuits aimed at reversing a federal public charge rule set to take effect Friday that would expand the list of public benefits counted against immigrants seeking green cards or other visas. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the city’s challenge from the City Hall Rotunda, flanked by New York Attorney General Letitia James and Corporation Counsel Steve Banks, who is leading the municipal case.
James is pursuing a parallel action with a coalition of states. Strategically, the pairing matters: the city suit targets the rule’s operational reach inside New York, while the state action seeks to bind the administration nationally.
A Rule Set to Take Effect Friday
The proposed change expands which public benefits can weigh against a visa applicant. Banks told reporters the current version is “even more harmful and extreme” than a similar 2019 effort, pointing to broad guidelines that grant federal officers greater latitude in who to target and new factors authorities may consider, including credit histories. Mamdani called the rule “drastic and unlawful.” “A new federal public charge rule not only sweeps aside more than a century of established law,” he said.
“It is intentionally vague as a means of creating uncertainty and fear, to isolate immigrant New Yorkers, to force them to make an impossible choice between meeting their own basic needs and continuing to live in the city that they love.”
The Calculus Behind the Challenge
James invoked an often-cited refrain about the administration in explaining the motivation behind the change. “Cruelty is the point,” she said. “Having a chilling effect on immigrants is the point.
Letting individuals know that they are not welcome here is the point. Immigration animus is the point.” The legal strategy draws on precedent.
James noted that the administration sought similar changes during Trump’s first term in 2019, and that state- and city-level lawyers mounted a successful challenge against it. The current rule, she argued, goes further. Mamdani said he and President Trump have “an ongoing conversation” about immigration policy and that their “deep disagreements” on the matter are known between them.
He added that the lawsuits seek not merely a temporary injunction but to stop the rule’s implementation entirely. The stakes extend beyond the courtroom.
More than a third of city residents are foreign-born, according to a recent city government report, and two-thirds are either first- or second-generation New Yorkers. Over 10,000 people have been detained by ICE across the city in 2026. Mamdani said some mixed-status families have already begun foregoing services such as SNAP, Medicaid and WIC for fear that using them could jeopardize future legal status.
He said the cost could be measured in deaths, noting that 4 million people, 1.8 million of them children, could unenroll from healthcare nationwide, and that infant mortality could spike in immigrant communities where people fear going to the hospital. “Denying people services does not erase their need,” the mayor said. “It compounds it, generating a greater cost to our system that will be placed on the backs of working people for years to come.”
What to Watch
The rule takes effect Friday unless a court intervenes. Watch whether the city and state actions are consolidated, and whether the administration’s expanded criteria — particularly credit histories — survive the first round of judicial review. The 2019 precedent cuts both ways: it shows such rules can be beaten in court, and it shows the administration is willing to return with a broader version.
