New York City’s Muslim socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani kicked off a multi-city lawsuit against the Trump administration’s latest America First win asking its Department of Homeland Security to scrutinize visa applications from foreigners over their likelihood of being ‘public charges.’ In other words, the Trump administration doesn’t want immigrants immediately receiving taxpayer-funded handouts and woke Democrats are going ballistic.
For context, President Trump revived the long-standing policy against public charges. Under current immigration law, a public charge is a foreigner, noncitizen that the government believes has a high likelihood of requiring assistance through any number of means-tested, redistributive, taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8, and others. While not simply saying to revoke every single application, the new guideline makes clear that immigrants who will immediately add to the welfare rolls ought to be declined.
Speaking to reporters alongside New York state’s Attorney General Letitia James, the freshman mayor called Trump’s new visa guidelines requiring immigrants, or family members of citizens looking to come here, to be self-sufficient a ‘campaign of violence and terror.’
“The federal government has waged a campaign of violence and terror. Unaccompanied children have been forced to navigate our judicial system alone. ICE has broken into our neighbors’ homes, work sites, and schools, and it has targeted those who have come to our country in search of refuge and in search of opportunity,” he said.
“This new federal public charge rule not only sweeps aside more than a century of established law; it is intentionally vague as a means of creating uncertainty and fear. To isolate, no mistake, this is an undisguised effort to strip New Yorkers of the services they rely on, the public benefits they are entitled to. Finally, it is estimated that up to 4 million people from across the country could unenroll from their health care alone, including 1.8 million children.
“None of this is abstract. People could die, as are New Yorkers. And like I said once before, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us,” he finished with hyperbolic rage. Watch Mamdani and James rail against the Trump administration below:
One commenter under a post to X that shared the video compared the supposed ‘violence and terrorism’ being unleashed by Trump against would-be migrants to his experience living for an extended period of time in Europe.
“I lived in Europe under temporary residency for a rather long time and I had to sign papers that said that would never access public welfare funds and that if I ever even tried to, that I would deported. I had to provide income statements, bank savings and investment documents on a regular basis or I would be deported. Mamdami and James are communists, not socialists, they are communists,” he noted.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video