The League of Women Voters of the United States joined sign-on comments to the Department of Homeland Security opposing a proposed rule on a change in the 2022 public charge regulation, which threatens the well-being of people in immigrant families.
Submitted via www.regulations.gov
December 19, 2025
Regulatory Coordination Division
Office of Policy and Strategy
Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
5900 Capital Gateway Drive
Camp Springs, Maryland 20746
Regarding: DHS Docket No. USCIS-2025-0304: Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility
The undersigned 725 national, state and local organizations are writing to oppose the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published in the Federal Register on November 19, 2025. The provisions of DHS’ 2022 public charge regulation (87 FR 55472) described in the NPRM as “straitjackets” are, more accurately, guardrails that safeguard the 28% of the United States population – about half of whom are U.S. citizens – living in immigrant families from arbitrary or biased application of the immigration law’s public charge provision. Rescinding the 2022 regulation is a threat to the nation’s health and wellbeing, and to the just administration of immigration law, and DHS should abandon this proposal.
Unknown rules lead to chaos and bias.
Without the 2022 regulation’s guardrails, DHS can deny Lawful Permanent Residence to immigrants based on their family's use of any government-funded health or social services program the administration wants.
The proposed rule offers no replacement for the policy defined by the 2022 regulation, indicating instead that the agency intends to provide new tools and guidance for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers at some future date. This approach raises three principal concerns.
First, until DHS issues new guidance, there would be no clear public charge policy available to the public. That is not to say, of course, that there would be no public charge policy. The NPRM specifically notes that USCIS officers would make public charge determinations informed by the Immigration and Nationality Act, past precedent, and case law. But the American people do not have the specialized materials and months or years of experience required to understand those authorities. In a practical sense, the proposal would result in DHS employing an undefined and arbitrary public charge policy to evaluate “green card” applications.
The danger is obvious. The NPRM articulates an approach comparable to taking down all of the traffic signs on American roadways and replacing them with signs indicating that police agencies will evaluate driving based on applicable state law and local ordinances, past precedent, and case law. People to whom the policy applied would be unable to understand its requirements and, therefore, unable to make informed choices to conform with that policy.
Second, the NPRM suggests that the public charge policy DHS contemplates will be extremely broad. The NPRM rejects the long-standing precedent that a person can only be found to be a public charge if they are “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either (i) the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or (ii) institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.” This principle, written into the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s 1999 field guidance and formalized by the 2022 public charge regulation, was itself based on decades of case law.
Instead, the NPRM explicitly indicates that DHS’ vision of “appropriate policy” would consider “any type of public benefits” as an indication that the applicant is a public charge. This passage is not accompanied by examples, and importantly, omits the reference used elsewhere in the NPRM to “means-tested” benefits. For instance, would calling the fire department or the police trigger a public charge determination? The NPRM offers no answers to these and other life-or-death questions.
This is not conjecture – it is expert assessment. In its comment on the NPRM that led to the 2022 public charge regulation, the American Public Health Association cautioned that “an unclear rule can also create unintended consequences, such as a domestic violence survivor forgoing police protection or a parent becoming fearful of seeking health care for their child.”
The NPRM also proposes to rescind the 2022 regulation’s clarification that the use of (or even applying for) health or social services by a green card applicant’s eligible family members is not grounds for a public charge determination. About half the people in immigrant families are U.S. citizens. The NPRM would, therefore, raise concerns that U.S. citizens’ family members’ use of safety net programs for which they qualify under federal law would undermine a parent’s or spouse’s green card application. Indeed, the NPRM acknowledges that “individuals who might choose to disenroll from or forgo future enrollment in a public benefits program include aliens as well as U.S. citizens who are members of mixed-status households.”
The NPRM offers assurances that the American people can trust public charge determinations based “on DHS officers' good judgment and sound discretion.” But individual officers make determinations based in part on the direction provided by DHS leadership. The NPRM repeatedly asserts that this proposal aims to align public charge determinations with Trump administration priorities. DHS cannot reasonably expect that administration priorities will not influence public charge determinations.
Third, DHS proposes to deny the American people the right to offer input on new public charge policy. While this and other regulatory proposals are subject to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) notice and comment requirement, DHS proposes to implement a new public charge policy through subregulatory “policy and interpretive tools” – a mechanism that skirts the APA’s public comment requirements. This approach asks the American people to consider DHS’ proposal to strike the 2022 public charge regulation without the context required to understand what would replace it, then denies the public an opportunity to weigh in on that replacement.
The proposed policy threatens the nation’s health and economic security.
The stakes for families affected by this proposal are incomprehensibly high, as the denial of a green card application for a person with a spouse and children can lead to family separation. The unavoidable consequence of the proposed public charge policy is that millions of lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizens in immigrant families would be deterred from seeking care and aid for which they qualify under federal law, so as to maximize their compliance with immigration rules they have not been told. We as a nation have been down this road before, and we know from bitter experience that it leads to a dangerous place.
The 2019 Trump public charge policy was devastating to the nation’s health and wellbeing. A 2021 survey of people in immigrant families found that about half (46%) of people whose families needed help during the pandemic declined to apply because of immigration concerns. Experts warned early on that the Trump public charge policy “weakens our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic” and identified it as one of four Trump administration policies that widened COVID-19’s disparate impact on families of color.
The pandemic was, thankfully, unique, but the proposed public charge policy change remains a threat to our country’s health and economic vitality even under less extreme circumstances. Millions of families across the country are already struggling to stay afloat, let alone get ahead. Add to that millions of additional Americans who will soon lose health care as a result of budget legislation passed by Congress and enacted by President Trump this year, and the dangers of weakening our health and economic infrastructure seem obvious.
Again, this is expert assessment. The American Public Health Association said as much in its 2019 statement opposing the Trump administration’s public charge policy change, warning that “we can expect higher rates of obesity, malnutrition and poverty; lower rates of prescription adherence and education attainment; and increased health care costs as immigrants turn to emergency departments to treat preventable illness and chronic disease complications.”
Immigrant families which include U.S. citizens and lawfully present people, account for 28% of the U.S. population and an estimated 5.1 million U.S. citizen children live with an undocumented family member. To deter so large a share of the American people from seeking the help and care they need and qualify for by law would constitute a serious threat to our country under the best of circumstances. In an emergency, it would be disastrous.
The proposed public charge policy is a backdoor assault on lawful immigration.
For people already in the United States, DHS conducts a public charge assessment when they apply for a green card – a key prerequisite for naturalization. By giving the present administration wider latitude to deny green card applications, the proposal would create new and expansive barriers to citizenship for millions of lawfully present immigrants.
This proposal is yet another effort to extinguish the Statue of Liberty’s lamp and obstruct lawful paths to U.S. citizenship– just like DHS’ $1 million “gold cards” and $100,000 visa fees, or its $550 work authorization fees and 90% increases in Temporary Protected Status application fees. It is similar to DHS’ decision to use “neighborhood checks” to harass naturalization applicants and their neighbors, or employ naturalization civics tests that are more about MAGA ideology than US history.
The public interest demands abandonment of this proposal.
To reiterate, this proposal would remove essential guardrails that protect millions of immigrant families, in favor of an unknown immigration policy that invites arbitrary decisions and political bias. It will deter millions of U.S. citizens in immigrant families, as well as lawfully present immigrants, from seeking care and aid for which they qualify under law. It will undermine the nation’s health and weaken our country’s economy, while making every social problem we face worse. And it turns its back on shared values enshrined on one of our country’s most beloved monuments.
Simply put, this proposal runs counter to the public interest. DHS should abandon it.
Sincerely,
See Attached for List of Signatories