The Trump administration will allow immigration officers to consider whether certain applicants have used taxpayer-funded benefits, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance, when determining their eligibility for permanent legal status, according to a CBS News report.
The Department of Homeland Security is rescinding a Biden-era regulation that limited how officers applied the long-standing “public charge” test, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials told CBS News. The policy change is expected to affect hundreds of thousands of Green Card applicants each year.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reposted this article on X and remarked that the rule is not yet in effect. “The earliest it could take effect is Sept. 18, 2026,” he wrote.
READ: Green Card applicants will not be required to leave US, DHS says (May 30, 2026)
“New York City will use every tool at our disposal to fight this attack on immigrant families and the communities that make our city the greatest on earth,” Mamdani said, pushing back on the decision. “For any questions, please call @NYCImmigrants Legal Support Hotline at 1-800-354-0365.”
This comes a few days after Mamdani called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the killing of a 26-year-old Colombian man by the agency.
Others also criticized the move with immigrant advocates saying it unfairly targeted poor people and would bar many people from obtaining permanent residency.
However, USCIS said the revived rule underlined the intent “that aliens in the United States be self-reliant and not dependent on taxpayer-funded government benefits.”
The regulation was originally adopted in 2019, during Trump’s first term. It significantly expanded the definition of a public charge to include anyone who received a government benefit for more than 12 months in any three-year period. The Trump administration had said people seeking Green Cards should not be “public charges” who are primarily dependent on government subsistence. The approach was eventually abandoned during the Biden administration.
READ: H-1B workers, temporary visa holders must apply for Green Cards from outside US (
USCIS officials told CBS News that benefits received by an applicant’s family members will not be treated as the applicant’s own, though officers may still consider them when assessing the applicant’s finances. For instance, those benefits may factor in if they suggest the applicant cannot financially support the household or if the benefits are helping to support the applicant.
The rule is expected to be filed for public inspection Thursday, with its effective date slated for early next week. The UCIS will not begin applying the new public charge framework for 60 days, giving the agency time to update forms, guidance and internal procedures, and pushing the operational date into September. For applications filed before the rule becomes operational, USCIS officials say they will only assess means-tested public benefits received on or after that date.