President Donald Trump’s ever-cruel administration is wrongly trying to put up even more roadblocks to block legal immigrants from getting green cards and a coalition of states and cities, led by New York in the persons of Attorney General Tish James and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is correctly fighting back.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has proposed a change in the public charge rule, effective today, that says that anyone utilizing basic government benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance can have that used against them when being up for a green card and be rendered inadmissible.

In a pair of lawsuits filed in Manhattan federal court this week, one by states and the other by cities, New York State and New York City and their partners are asking independent judges to say no.

The use of public charge determinations is not a new phenomenon; in fact, it has been part of U.S. laws since before the U.S. existed as an independent country.

What’s different here is that the administration wants to expand this analysis beyond its original purpose as a tool to determine if someone was likely to become fully dependent on the government to whether they are subjectively likely, at some point in the future, to end up using the same public benefits that all Americans are entitled to anyway. It’s an impossible standard that requires, in part, proving a negative.

James and Mamdani are right that this policy would cost taxpayers billions in lost federal funding, which we would inevitably have to help make up. Beyond the monetary cost, it will cost our community dearly as fear drives people from programs that they need, whether or not the rule actually goes into effect in its current form.

As some public officials and commentators have noted, the change does not actually have to take effect to have a widespread impact. Research has already established that Trump’s 2019 attempt at a similar rule kept people from utilizing services they were legally entitled to, or even from enrolling U.S. citizen children, whether or not it would actually have an effect on their status.

You can’t expect people to independently research and understand the exact delimitations of a policy like this and how they and their families do or do not fit in it. People will hear “the government will deport you for using public benefits” and they’ll act on that information, even when it’s wrong or incomplete or the benefits at issue are not germane at all. Make no mistake that this intentional fear-mongering coming from the White House, which will keep New Yorkers away from even our own state and local services.

Yet again, it will be up to a federal judge whether Trump gets to enact policy by capricious decree like a king of yore. Fortunately, most judges, whoever they’ve been appointed by and however long they’ve served, still seem to have a concrete interest in upholding the law.

For now, everything is banking on the judges to do their job and strike this rule down. Longer-term, it will be up to Congress to take this tool away from overzealous presidents.

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