A federal court blocked a new policy that would deny legal status to immigrants seeking public assistance. Photo: Eric Risberg

A federal judge in Manhattan became the first in the country Friday to bar the Trump administration from enforcing its so-called "public charge" rule, which would make it easier for the federal government to deny immigrants legal status who seek public assistance based on their income.

The decision came just days before the rule was scheduled to take effect Tuesday, after being finalized by the Trump administration in August.

U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels of the Southern District of New York appeared skeptical of the motive behind the rule during oral arguments on a motion to halt its implementation earlier this week. That same doubt was indicated in his decision Friday.

"Defendants do not articulate why they are changing the public charge definition, why this new definition is needed now, or why the definition set forth in the rule—which has absolutely no support in the history of U.S. immigration law—is reasonable," Daniels wrote.

The litigation before Daniels is just one set of legal challenges out of several around the country, including others in California and Washington that haven't yet yielded the same result.

Attorneys involved in two lawsuits, one led by the Legal Aid Society and another from New York state, had argued before Daniels earlier this week that the rule was targeted toward racial minorities and would cause irreparable harm to those groups if allowed to take effect.

In his decision on the motion Friday, Daniels agreed that if the rule were to go forward next week, the harm caused to those individuals "cannot be undone."

"It is a rule that will punish individuals for their receipt of benefits provided by our government, and discourages them from lawfully receiving available assistance intended to aid them in becoming contributing members of our society," Daniels wrote.

"It is impossible to argue that there is no irreparable harm for these individuals, plaintiffs, and the public at large," he continued.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Friday afternoon that the rule would have had a "devastating" impact on New Yorkers, regardless of their immigration status, and cheered the decision to put it on hold.

"Once again, the courts have thwarted the Trump administration's attempts to enact rules that violate both our laws and our values, sending a loud and clear message that they cannot rewrite our story to meet their agenda," James said.

Hasan Shafiqullah, Attorney-In-Charge of Legal Aid's Immigration Law Unit, said they would like to see the Trump administration reverse course on the rule in response to the decision, since Daniels wrote that the case was likely to be decided in favor of the plaintiffs.

"We are relieved that this court has issued this nationwide injunction," Shafiqullah said. "We hope the court's decision sends a message to Homeland Security to withdraw the rule altogether."

Immigrants deemed to be a public charge by the federal government, attorneys have said, are less likely to be granted legal status to remain in the country. That's part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was enacted by Congress more than six decades ago.

The litigation before Daniels targeted the Trump administration's new definition of who would be considered a public charge, which has historically referred to individuals who are "predominantly reliant on government aid" for an extended period of time, attorneys have said.

Under the new rule, immigrants who receive one or more designated public benefits for an aggregate of 12 months during a three-year period would more likely be deemed a public charge. Those designated benefits include Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies.

Daniels, in his decision Friday, wrote that the new definition of "public charge" proposed by the Trump administration couldn't be found elsewhere, either in federal immigration law or any other precedent, and that it may have been promulgated unlawfully.

"One thing is abundantly clear—'public charge' has never been understood to mean receipt of 12 months of benefits within a 36-month period," Daniels wrote. "Plaintiffs raise a compelling argument that defendants lack the authority to redefine 'public charge' as they have."

Daniels also wrote that nowhere in the country's immigration law did Congress intend for a redefinition of "public charge" as attempted by the rule.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has framed the rule as a way to prevent immigrants from depending on public resources while living in the United States. The states and various organizations challenging it have argued that the federal government will use the rule to remove more immigrants from the country.

Both the Legal Aid Society and attorneys for New York state are challenging the new rule based on alleged violations of the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.

The lawsuit from Legal Aid also includes attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. They're representing nonprofit Make the Road New York, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Catholic Charities Community Services, African Services Committee, and the Asian American Federation.

New York was joined on its lawsuit against the rule by the states of Connecticut and Vermont, and the city of New York. 

"We are gratified that the federal district court issued an order halting the Trump administration's unlawful, unfair and discriminatory new public charge rule while the lawsuit brought by the city and its state partners goes forward," said Georgia Pestana, acting corporation counsel for New York City.

Representatives for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the litigation, did not immediately comment on the decision.