Chicago’s radical Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson joined New York’s socialist mayor to sue the Trump administration to protect legal and illegal migrants and their access to U.S. welfare programs, because, in his words, illegals are an “essential part of who we are.”
Johnson joined New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration for shutting down welfare-dependent immigration to the United States through the “public charge” rule.
The Trump administration has resurrected the “public charge” rule, which makes legal immigrants less likely to secure green cards if they have used any form of welfare in the past, including subsidized healthcare services, food stamps, or public housing. But Democrats oppose the rule and claim that migrants who are not productive citizens have every right to be subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer through welfare programs.
The purpose of the rule is to better ensure that migrants coming to the U.S. can stand on their own feet and will be useful members of our society, not here just to live off public largess. But in his message concerning the lawsuit, Johnson insisted that illegal and legal migrants are an inseparable part of our national identity and their access to welfare should be sacrosanct.
In his message to the city, Johnson insisted that reinstating the rule “sweeps aside more than a century of settled law, as well as decades of federal guidance establishing clear limits on how public charge determinations can be made.” Johnson further alleges that the Trump administration’s rule “dramatically and unlawfully expands the government’s authority to consider an immigrant’s use of public benefits, allowing the federal government to consider virtually any means-tested or income-based public benefits while inviting officers to make decisions that are inconsistent and discriminatory.”
Johnson went on to say that it is America’s duty to provide welfare for “immigrant families.”
“Chicago will not stand by while the federal government forces immigrant families to choose between putting food on the table, taking their children to the doctor, or protecting their ability to remain in this country,” Johnson said in his statement.
“This rule is not only cruel, it is unlawful, and it threatens the health and safety of our entire city,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson. “More than half a million Chicagoans were born outside the United States. They are our neighbors and an essential part of who we are. Chicago has fought these attacks before, and, alongside New York and cities across the country, we will fight them again. We will use every tool available to protect our immigrant communities and defend their right to live with dignity and without fear,” he added.
Mayor Johnson has not distinguished between legal migrants and illegals in his polices from city hall and has spent more than $639.6 million tax dollars on illegals since he came to office three years ago, WLS-TV reported.
Still, the Center for Immigration Studies found migrants are consuming massive levels of welfare.
The group’s recent study found that from 2021 to 2025, about 47 percent of immigrant-headed households in the U.S. were on one or more traditional forms of welfare. Compare that to 28 percent of American citizen-headed households that were on one or more traditional forms of welfare — representing a 19-percent gap between welfare use among immigrants and Americans.
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