The Trump administration’s rewrite of long-recognized immigration law has left the special-needs daughter of a Long Island man stranded in Guatemala, foiled a Manhattan grandmother’s fight to reunite with her kids and grandkids, and indefinitely separated countless more Americans from their families, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.
The Manhattan Federal Court complaint against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department says a policy categorically barring visa applicants from 75 countries is based on demonstrably false claims that immigrants of specific nationalities rely on cash welfare. The ban went into effect Jan. 21.
Another action by Trump’s State Department that redefined how noncitizens can be deemed at risk of relying on taxpayer-funded assistance — or becoming a so-called “public charge” — flies in the face of decades of settled precedent, the suit argues.
“There are no factual findings to support the sweeping refusal and suspension of nearly half of all prospective immigrants around the world seeking admission to the United States,” reads the complaint, which was brought on behalf of Americans with relatives affected by the hardline policies, foreign workers, and various community groups.
The lawsuit outlines the toll the new apporach has taken.
Suffolk County man Cesar Andred Aguirre, a warehouse supervisor, has been separated from his wife and baby daughter for weeks after they traveled to Guatemala in January for a consular interview to obtain her visa.
The ban went into effect on the day of the interview, and the mother and still-nursing baby were prohibited from traveling back to the U.S., despite the visa being approved and paid for, according to the lawsuit.
The baby girl has Turner’s Syndrome and requires ongoing medical care, having recently undergone ear surgery, the suit details.
“The medical care she needs is not available in Guatemala. She has already missed medical appointments because of the Ban,” the suit reads.
New Yorker Agnes Kyeremaa, 80, began a long and challenging process to petition to bring her four adult sons and daughters and three grandchildren to the U.S. from Ghana more than a decade ago and was “anxiously waiting” to finally be reunited when the Trump administration changed the rules, the lawsuit details.
“The last-minute unexpected refusal and denial after a decade of waiting, and on the discriminatory basis of race, ethnicity and national origin simply because they come from Ghana has been extremely upsetting and acutely distressing for her, and for her affected children and grandchildren,” reads the complaint.
Diana Konaté from African Communities Together, one of the groups party to the suit, said the ban had made what has long been an inhumane process even more so.
“Our immigration system already contains deeply embedded discrimination that makes obtaining a visa extraordinarily difficult for people across the African continent,” Konaté said.
“This ban makes an already broken system even more harmful by cruelly denying families the chance to reunite. ACT and its members will continue to fight these policies.”
For decades, the government determined, on a case-by-case basis, whether someone seeking lawful immigration status could become a “public charge” by analyzing whether they might someday become primarily dependent on cash welfare or need long-term institutional care.
Under the new reading of the policy, the Trump administration has authorized immigration officers to mark against applicants “any other form of public assistance, social welfare, or private charity” used to “help low-income people.”
“Not only are they trying to bring in a whole new universe of benefits that you used at any time, or might at any time in the future — you need a little bit of housing assistance after you had an accident, or something like that — they’re saying, we don’t even need to do an individual determination. Entire nations are blocked,” said Hasan Shafiqullah, an attorney with The Legal Aid Society, which was one of five legal groups that filed Monday’s suit.
“That is blatantly against the law.”
Though Trump and his top officials and aides have repeatedly accused immigrants of taking from American taxpayers, the vast majority of visa applicants are, in fact, ineligible for public benefits in their first five years in the U.S. The benefits afforded to the few who are eligible do not pose detrimental harm to the U.S., Congress has determined in the past.
The case filed Monday accuses the Trump administration of bending the law as a pretext to limit the immigration of nonwhite immigrants and says the policies can be traced back to a 2016 policy proposal by the Center for Immigration Studies, whose late founder, John Tanton, advocated for a “European-American majority.”
The memo recommended restricting low-income people and asylum seekers from countries outside Europe by leveraging “the public charge doctrine to reduce the number of welfare-dependent foreigners living in the United States,” the suit details. More than 85% of the countries included in the ban are non-European and have majority nonwhite populations.
Shafiqullah said the bans had blatantly targeted communities of color, with Trump taking policies from his first term to the extreme.
“This time, Trump was actually explicit about one thing, immigration only from majority white countries — like Denmark and Norway and Sweden. Opening the door to refugees from South Africa, if they’re white South Africans,” Shafiqullah said.
“They’re saying the quiet part out loud this time.”
The News reached out to the State Department for comment.
