Opinion ID: 4553022
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Settled Meaning of “Public Charge”

Text: With this understanding of the history of the public charge ground, we turn to the applicability of the ratification canon. We first examine whether Congress changed the statutory language as it amended the ground over the years, so as to render the canon inapposite. See Holder v. Martinez Gutierrez, 566 U.S. 583, 593 (2012). We then determine whether the caselaw interpretations of 56 the term produced a sufficiently consistent and settled meaning of the term, such that we may presume Congress ratified that understanding when it created the current public charge statute in 1996. See Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 846 (1986). We quickly dispose of the first question. There can be no dispute that, since its origins in the Immigration Act of 1882, Congress reenacted the public charge ground without pertinent change in 1891, 1907, 1917, 1952, and 1996. We note that Congress made minor alterations to the ground over the course of its history. For example, the 1882 public charge ground excluded anyone who was “unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge” at their time of arrival in the United States while subsequent acts established the forwardlooking likelihood standard. Compare Immigration Act of 1882 § 2 with Immigration Act of 1891 § 1. And with IIRIRA, Congress added the list of mandatory factors to consider when applying the ground. See IIRIRA § 531(a). But Congress has unwaveringly described the fundamental characteristic at issue as being a “public charge” since 1882. We easily conclude that Congress “adopt[ed] the language used in [its] earlier act[s]” in its most recent reenactment of the public charge ground in 1996. See Hecht v. Malley, 265 U.S. 144, 153 (1924). 57 With respect to the second question, our review of the historical administrative and judicial interpretations of the ground over the years leaves us convinced that there was a settled meaning of “public charge” well before Congress enacted IIRIRA. The absolute bulk of the caselaw, from the Supreme Court, the circuit courts, and the BIA interprets “public charge” to mean a person who is unable to support herself, either through work, savings, or family ties. See, e.g., Day, 34 F.2d at 922; Harutunian, 14 I. & N. Dec. at 588-89. Indeed, we think this interpretation was established early enough that it was ratified by Congress in the INA of 1952. But the subsequent and consistent administrative interpretations of the term from the 1960s and 1970s remove any doubt that it was adopted by Congress in IIRIRA. See United Airlines, Inc. v. Brien, 588 F.3d 158, 173 (2d Cir. 2009) (noting that “Congress’s repeated amendment of the relevant provisions of the statute without expressing any disapproval” of the BIA’s interpretation is “persuasive evidence that the [Agency’s] interpretation is the one intended by Congress” (internal quotation marks omitted)). We find particularly significant the Attorney General’s decision from 1962, which summarizes the “extensive judicial interpretation” of the term as requiring a particular circumstance, like disability or age, that shows that “the burden of 58 supporting the alien is likely to be cast on the public[.]” Martinez-Lopez, 10 I. & N. Dec. at 421. Accordingly, the Attorney General held that “[a] healthy person in the prime of life cannot ordinarily be considered likely to become a public charge[.]” Id. The BIA came to a similar conclusion after its own review of the public charge caselaw and legislative history, holding that “any alien who is incapable of earning a livelihood, who does not have sufficient funds in the United States for his support, and [who] has no person in the United States willing and able to assure that he will not need public support is excludable as likely to become a public charge[.]” Harutunian, 14 I. & N. Dec. at 589-90. Subsequent administrative decisions affirmed that the public charge determination must be made based on the totality of the circumstances and rejected the notion that receipt of public benefits categorically renders one a public charge. See Perez, 15 I. & N. Dec. at 137; Vindman, 16 I. & N. Dec. at 132; A-, 19 I. & N. Dec. at 870. The scope and consistency of these administrative decisions warrants the application of the ratification canon. These published decisions are nationally binding, issued under the agency’s mandate to “provide clear and uniform guidance to [other components of the government] and the general public on the 59 proper interpretation and administration of the [INA].” 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(d)(1). The broad principles articulated in the decisions are grounded in comprehensive reviews of public charge history and offer a consistent understanding of the term as they carry that history forward. While we may not derive a settled rule from isolated or contradictory decisions, see Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enf’t, 543 U.S. 335, 350-52 (2005), that is not the case here. For more than twenty years prior to IIRIRA, the agency interpreted “public charge” to mean a person not capable of supporting himself. In the face of this consistent agency interpretation – which itself aligns with the earlier judicial interpretations – we conclude that when Congress reenacted the public charge ground in 1996 it ratified this settled construction of the term. See FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U.S. 157 (2000) (concluding that Congress ratified agency interpretation that had been its “unwavering position since its inception” and that was consistent “with the position that its predecessor agency had first taken”). Our conclusion finds further support in the legislative history of IIRIRA. “Although we are generally reluctant to employ legislative history at step one of Chevron” it may be helpful “when the interpretive clues speak almost unanimously, making Congress’s intent clear beyond reasonable doubt.” Catskill 60 Mountains, 846 F.3d at 515 (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted). We thus look to the legislative history only to confirm what we have already concluded. As noted above, Congress very nearly included a statutory definition of “public charge” in IIRIRA that would have redefined the term to mean receipt of any form of means-tested public benefits for more than twelve months. See CONFERENCE REPORT, H.R. REP. NO. 104-828, at 138. That proposed definition was intended to overcome the BIA’s Matter of B- decision, which interpreted the public charge ground of deportation, but it was deleted from the final enactment under threat of presidential veto.26 See 142 CONG. REC. S4,408-09 (daily ed. April 30, 1996) (statement of Sen. Simpson); 142 CONG. REC. S11,882 (statement of Sen. 26 The definition was proposed as part of the public charge ground of deportation. CONFERENCE REPORT, H.R. REP. NO. 104-828, at 138. We nevertheless think it reasonable to look to this language as we interpret the public charge ground of inadmissibility on the principle that a term appearing in multiple places within a statute is “generally read the same way each time it appears.” Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 143 (1994). And while the definition was proposed to overcome Matter of B-’s procedural safeguards for public charge deportation, the definition is confined to identifying the relevant benefits and time period of use that made one a “public charge” and could have easily been transposed to the inadmissibility context. Cf. Harutunian, 14 I. & N. Dec. at 589. 61 Kyl). In effect, an effort was made to change the prior administrative and judicial consensus as to the meaning of public charge, but that effort failed. While we agree with DHS that failed legislative proposals are, as a general matter, unreliable sources of legislative history because bills may fail for any number of reasons, here we know exactly why the definition was removed from IIRIRA and find it directly relevant to our analysis. See Solid Waste Agency of N. Cook Cty. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 531 U.S. 159, 169-70 (2001). We read this legislative history as further evidence that Congress was aware of prevailing administrative interpretations of “public charge” when it enacted IIRIRA. See Lindahl v. Office of Pers. Mgmt., 470 U.S. 768, 782-83 (1985) (applying ratification canon where legislative history demonstrated Congress was aware of interpretation). Congress’s abandonment of its efforts to change the meaning of the term further suggests that it ratified the existing interpretation of “public charge” in 1996. See Bob Jones Univ. v. United States, 461 U.S. 574, 600-01 (1983). DHS urges us to conclude that Congress did not ratify any interpretation of “public charge” because the term has never had a fixed definition. To support its contention, DHS points to the 1950 Senate Judiciary Committee report, which observed that “the elements constituting likelihood of becoming a public charge 62 are varied[.]” S. REP. NO. 81-1515, at 349. Consequently, the report recommends that the term not be defined in the statute and that the determination of whether a given non-citizen is likely to become a public charge should “rest[] within the discretion of the [agency].” Id.; see id. at 347 (noting the term has been given “varied definitions” by the courts). Rather than suggesting that the core meaning of “public charge” is unclear, the language on which DHS relies refers to the fact there are a variety of personal circumstances that may be relied on to show the likelihood that a would-be immigrant would fall within that category. As described above, the report distills from the caselaw four circumstances that indicate a non-citizen is likely to become a public charge. Id. at 348. It thereby recognizes that there are many paths to dependency, and that administrative flexibility in determining whether a noncitizen is likely to be dependent is desirable. But the fact that many and varied circumstances may show that one is likely to become a public charge does not mean that the underlying term is undefined or lacks a core meaning. And while DHS makes much of the fact that it retains discretion to decide whether the ground applies in a given case, the allowance of discretion in individual cases 63 does not mean that the term itself is standardless or without a core, established meaning. We recognize that our conclusion that Congress ratified the settled meaning of “public charge” in 1996 conflicts with decisions from the only two circuits to have addressed this argument to date. See City and Cty. of San Francisco v. USCIS, 944 F.3d 773, 798 (9th Cir. 2019); Cook Cty. v. Wolf, 962 F.3d 208, 226 (7th Cir. 2020). In the context of granting DHS’s motion to stay the injunctions against the enforcement of the Rule entered by district courts in California and Washington, the Ninth Circuit decided that “public charge” had been subjected to “varying historical interpretations” by 1996, such that the ratification canon did not apply. San Francisco, 944 F.3d at 797. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that there was no consistent interpretation because [i]nitially, the likelihood of being housed in a government or charitable institution was most important. Then, the focus shifted in 1948 to whether public benefits received by an immigrant could be monetized, and the immigrant refused to pay for them. In 1974, it shifted again to whether the immigrant was employable and self- sufficient. That was subsequently narrowed in 1987 to 64 whether the immigrant had received public cash assistance, which excluded in-kind benefits. 27 Id. at 796. We think the Ninth Circuit goes astray in pinning the definition of “public charge” on the form of public care provided to the dependent non-citizen. That the face of our welfare system has changed over time does not mean that the fundamental inquiry of the public charge ground – whether the non-citizen is likely to depend on that system – has also changed. The settled meaning of “public charge,” as the plain meaning of the term already suggests, is dependency: being a persistent “charge” on the public purse. And as we explain further below, the mere receipt of benefits from the government does not constitute such dependency. We are similarly unpersuaded by the Seventh Circuit’s “admittedly incomplete” historical review and its conclusion that plaintiffs in that case had failed to establish that Congress ratified the settled meaning of the term. See Cook Cty., 962 F.3d at 226. The Seventh Circuit focuses almost exclusively on the state of the law prior to 1927 and enactments post-dating Congress’s 1996 amendment 27 We explain below our further disagreement with these characterizations of the 1948 Matter of B- decision and the 1987 public charge provision established in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which only applied to those noncitizens participating in an ad hoc legalization program. 65 to the public charge ground, the point at which any existing interpretation would have been ratified. Id. at 222-26. Critically, this limited analysis omits the administrative interpretations of the 1960s and 1970s that established uniform and nationally binding interpretations of the public charge ground, a key component of our determination that Congress ratified the prevailing interpretation of the term in 1996. See id. at 225. In light of the judicial, administrative, and legislative treatments of the public charge ground from 1882 to 1996, we hold that Congress ratified the settled meaning of “public charge” when it enacted IIRIRA. Congress intended the public charge ground of inadmissibility to apply to those non-citizens who were likely to be unable to support themselves in the future and to rely on the government for subsistence. “[D]eference is not due unless a court, employing traditional tools of statutory construction, is left with an unresolved ambiguity.” Epic Sys., 138 S. Ct. at 1630 (internal quotation marks omitted). Here, because the ratification canon reveals the intent of Congress “on the precise question at issue, that intention is the law and must be given effect.” Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843 n.9. We thus owe no deference to the Rule and consider only whether it comports with congressional intent. 66 6. The Rule’s Inconsistency with the Settled Meaning “No matter how it is framed, the question a court faces when confronted with an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is always, simply, whether the agency has stayed within the bounds of its statutory authority.” City of Arlington v. FCC, 569 U.S. 290, 297 (2013) (emphasis omitted). Having marked out the interpretive boundaries of “public charge,” we now consider whether the Rule’s interpretation falls within the ambit of congressional intent. DHS repeatedly claims that the Rule aligns with the intent of Congress because it excludes those non-citizens who lack “self-sufficiency and . . . need to rely on the government for support.” 84 Fed. Reg. at 41,317; see, e.g., id. at 41,295, 41,306, 41,318, 41,320, 41,348. As we have just concluded, Congress did indeed ratify a consistent and long-standing judicial and administrative understanding of “public charge” as focused on non-citizens’ abilities to support themselves. But DHS’s generalized assurance that it shares Congress’s interest in self-sufficiency is belied by the Rule’s actual definition of “public charge,” which reveals that DHS and Congress have dramatically different notions of the term. The prevailing administrative and judicial interpretation of “public charge” ratified by Congress understood the term to mean a non-citizen who 67 cannot support himself, in the sense that he “is incapable of earning a livelihood, . . . does not have sufficient funds in the United States for his support, and has no person in the United States willing and able to assure that he will not need public support[.]” Harutunian, 14 I. & N. Dec. at 589. Moreover, under that interpretation the “determination of whether an alien is likely to become a public charge . . . is a prediction based upon the totality of the alien’s circumstances . . . . The fact that an alien has been on welfare does not, by itself, establish that he or she is likely to become a public charge.” Perez, 15 I. & N. Dec. at 137. In contrast, the Rule categorically renders non-citizens public charges – i.e., not self-sufficient – if they are likely to access any quantity of the enumerated benefits for a limited number of months. See 84 Fed. Reg. at 41,349. We think it plain on the face of these different interpretations that the Rule falls outside the statutory bounds marked out by Congress. Our conclusion is bolstered by the fact that many of the benefits newly considered by the Rule have relatively generous eligibility criteria and are designed to provide supplemental assistance to those living well above the poverty level, as we discuss in greater detail below.28 See infra Section II.C.2. 28 DHS assumes that receipt of SNAP, Medicaid, or housing assistance shows that a non-citizen is per se unable to meet basic needs. See, e.g., 84 Fed. Reg. at 41,349. Because DHS primarily invokes this assumption as a justification for its changed 68 To be sure, we do not find the intent of Congress evidenced by the ratification canon to be so precise as to support only one interpretation. On the contrary, the principles at issue are broad enough that they may support a variety of agency interpretations. But while an agency may “give authoritative meaning to the statute within the bounds of th[e] uncertainty” implicit in congressional intent, “the presence of some uncertainty” does not prevent us from “discern[ing] the outer limits of [a statutory] term[.]” Cuomo v. Clearing House Ass’n, LLC, 557 U.S. 519, 525 (2009). When the meaning of a statutory term is unclear, federal agencies specialized in the area receive deference from courts in assigning meaning to the uncertain language. But the deference is not unlimited. If Congress passed a statute leaving it unclear whether a term of the statute means A, B, or C, an appropriate federal agency will receive deference in concluding that the proper meaning is any one of A, B, or C. But it does not follow that, because the statutory term could mean either A, B, or C, the agency will receive deference in interpreting it to mean X or Y or Z, because interpretation, we address (and reject) it in our analysis of the Plaintiffs’ arbitrary and capricious challenge. We note it here because the fact that the Rule incorporates public benefits with broader programmatic aims than basic subsistence evidences the Rule’s inconsistency with congressional intent. 69 such an interpretation would be inconsistent with the meaning of the statute. Whatever gray area may exist at the margins, we need only decide today whether Congress “has unambiguously foreclosed the [specific] statutory interpretation” at issue. Catawba Cty. v. EPA, 571 F.3d 20, 35 (D.C. Cir. 2009). And we conclude that Congress’s intended meaning of “public charge” unambiguously forecloses the Rule’s expansive interpretation. We are not persuaded by DHS’s efforts to argue otherwise. DHS first attempts to argue that its definition of “public charge” is consistent with the historical caselaw interpretations of the term. DHS points to two district court cases from the 1920s to claim that Congress ratified a definition of “public charge” that encompasses minimal and temporary public benefits usage. The first, Guimond v. Howes, 9 F.2d 412 (D. Me. 1925), held that members of an immigrant family were likely to become public charges when the husband was a bootlegger who had been incarcerated for two periods of sixty and ninety days, respectively. Id. at 413. Because the family had been “supported” by the town while he was imprisoned, and because the husband’s occupation made it likely he would return to jail in the future, the district court found the family 70 likely public charges. Id. at 413-14. The second case, Ex parte Turner, 10 F.2d 816, 817 (S.D. Cal. 1926), also found that members of a family were likely public charges because the husband was “predisposed to physical infirmity” and would “likely be incapacitated from performing any work or earning support for himself and [his] family” when his ailments flared up in the future. Because his wife and children had received charitable aid during his previous two-month hospitalization, the court anticipated they would do so again when he became sick in the future and found the family to be likely public charges. Id. In both cases, the district court did look at previous, short-term receipt of public benefits in making the public charge determination. But neither case suggests that this receipt alone rendered the immigrant a public charge. Rather, the district courts found it significant that the families were likely to repeatedly become dependent on the public in the future, as the breadwinners of the families were unlikely to stop bootlegging or to overcome physical infirmity. Guimond, 9 F.2d at 414; Turner, 10 F.2d at 817. These cases thus do not suggest that courts have historically considered the temporary receipt of benefits as sufficient to enter a public charge finding. To the contrary, both Guimond and Turner rest on 71 the finding that the benefits usage was not merely temporary but was likely to regularly reoccur.29 The only other case on which DHS relies is Matter of B-, 3 I. & N. Dec. at 323. DHS argues that Matter of B- shows that a non-citizen is deportable as a public charge if she fails to reimburse the government for the benefits used, even if the non-citizen was not primarily dependent on the benefits. DHS reads far too much into the case. In Matter of B-, the non-citizen was institutionalized, the paradigmatic example of a public charge. Id. at 324. The only issue in the case was whether she could escape deportation by reimbursing the state for the services received. Id. at 326. The BIA held that a non-citizen is not deportable as a public charge unless the state has asked for reimbursement and the non-citizen or her relatives have failed to pay. Id. at 325. Rather than broadening the definition of the public charge ground of inadmissibility – or saying anything that casts doubt on other cases suggesting that a “public charge” must be persistently and primarily dependent on the government – Matter of B- held that even an 29 In any event, even if these cases could be read to support DHS’s proposition, they would not outweigh the prior or subsequent caselaw – particularly the agency decisions from the 1960s and 1970s setting out nationally binding public charge standards – endorsing a different interpretation of “public charge.” 72 immigrant who had been institutionalized at public expense because she was unable to care for herself and was likely to require permanent hospitalization, still was not categorically a public charge if the state had not sought payment and been unable to collect. Matter of B- thus offers a procedural escape hatch to those who need government services but have money to pay. While the decision alters the mechanics of deportation as a public charge, it hardly presents a new interpretation of the term “public charge” itself.30 It seems particularly odd to cite this somewhat unusual case, with its generous treatment of a non-citizen who might well seem to fall within the established meaning of “public charge,” in support of a sweeping expansion of that category. DHS next argues that a series of policy statements enacted as part of PRWORA show that the Rule’s interpretation is consistent with congressional 30 Moreover, in Matter of Harutunian, the BIA held that the Matter of B- test is limited to the public charge ground of deportation and should not be read into the public charge ground of inadmissibility. 14 I. & N. Dec. at 589-90. This distinction between the public charge grounds of inadmissibility and deportation was affirmed by INS in its 1999 Guidance, where it explained that while “the definition of public charge is the same for both admission/adjustment and deportation, the standards applied to public charge adjudications in each context are significantly different.” 64 Fed. Reg. at 28,689. 73 intent regarding the meaning of “public charge.” See 8 U.S.C. § 1601 (describing the “national policy with respect to welfare and immigration”). In the policy statements, which lay out the rationale for enacting restrictions on non-citizen eligibility for public benefits, Congress emphasized that “[s]elf-sufficiency has been a basic principle of United States immigration law since this country’s earliest immigration statutes” and affirmed that [i]t continues to be the immigration policy of the United States that (A) aliens within the Nation’s borders not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations, and (B) the availability of public benefits not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States. Id. § 1601(1), (2). The policy statements further explain that PRWORA creates “new rules for eligibility and sponsorship agreements in order to assure that aliens be self-reliant in accordance with national immigration policy.” Id. § 1601(5). The policy statements conclude by noting that any state adopting the federal benefits eligibility scheme laid out in PRWORA “shall be considered to have chosen the least restrictive means available for achieving the compelling governmental interest of assuring that aliens be self-reliant in accordance with national immigration policy.” Id. § 1601(7). 74 DHS reads these policy statements to mean that “Congress expressly equated a lack of ‘self-sufficiency’ with the receipt of ‘public benefits’” and that Congress intended “public charge” to mean “individuals who rely on taxpayerfunded benefits to meet their basic needs.” Appellants’ Br. at 30-31. We are thoroughly unpersuaded by this argument. PRWORA implemented Congress’s goal of self-sufficiency by restricting non-citizen eligibility for benefits, including the establishment of the five-year waiting period for LPRs. PRWORA did not eliminate non-citizen eligibility for benefits nor does it suggest that such drastic action is necessary. Still less does it indicate any congressional intention that noncitizens who receive the benefits for which Congress did not render them ineligible risk being considered “public charges.” On the contrary, the policy statements specifically proclaim that the new eligibility restrictions sufficiently “achiev[ed] the compelling governmental interest of assuring that aliens be selfreliant in accordance with national immigration policy.” Id. § 1601(7) (emphasis added). Clearly, Congress decided that the benefits it preserved for non-citizens after PRWORA did not interfere with its interest in assuring non-citizen selfsufficiency. Rather than supporting DHS’s expanded interpretation, both the policy statements, taken as a whole, and the actual implementation of those 75 policy goals in the substantive provisions of PRWORA, are in considerable tension with the Rule’s new interpretation of “public charge,” which penalizes non-citizens for the possibility that they will access the very benefits PRWORA preserved for them.31 DHS attempts to salvage this argument by pointing out that the 1999 Guidance made various cash benefits relevant to the public charge analysis, notwithstanding that PRWORA also preserved non-citizen eligibility for those benefits. DHS argues that this shows that Congress did not intend to preclude the agency from considering the receipt of PRWORA-approved benefits in the public charge determination. DHS is correct that the 1999 Guidance makes “receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance” one of two ways “primary dependence” on the government could be shown. 64 Fed. Reg. at 28,689. But the Guidance was also clear that receipt of such benefits alone was insufficient to establish dependency, and that any such receipt needed to be weighed in the 31 We note that in its decision on DHS’s motion to stay the preliminary injunctions, the Ninth Circuit accepted DHS’s argument on this point. San Francisco, 944 F.3d at 799. The Ninth Circuit based its analysis on the first two policy statements but did not consider the impact of the subsequent statements in which Congress explained that the PRWORA eligibility scheme satisfied its notions of self-sufficiency. Id. 76 context of the non-citizen’s overall circumstances. The Guidance explicitly noted that “an alien receiving a small amount of cash for income maintenance purposes could be determined not likely to become a public charge due to other positive factors under the totality of the circumstances test.” 64 Fed. Reg. at 28,690. While the 1999 Guidance permissibly looked at receipt of cash benefits as one factor indicating dependence on the government, the Rule elevates receipt of any quantity of a broad list of benefits to be the very definition of “public charge.” See 84 Fed. Reg. at 41,295. The question under consideration is whether the Rule’s understanding of the term “public charge” goes beyond the bounds of the settled meaning of the term. The Plaintiffs do not argue, and we do not hold, that the receipt of various kinds of public benefits is irrelevant to the determination of whether a noncitizen is likely to become a public charge. But defining public charge to mean the receipt, even for a limited period, of any of a wide range of public benefits – particularly, as we discuss below, ones that are designed to supplement an individual’s or family’s efforts to support themselves, rather than to deal with their likely permanent inability to do so – is inconsistent with the traditional 77 understanding of what it means to be a “public charge,” which was wellestablished by 1996. Finally, DHS points to three other statutory provisions to support its argument that the Rule is consistent with the intent of Congress. First, DHS points to 8 U.S.C. § 1182(s), which exempts from the public charge analysis “any benefits” received by a non-citizen who qualified for such benefits as a survivor of domestic violence. See 8 U.S.C. § 1641(c). DHS argues that because § 1182(s) excuses any benefits received, Congress understood that past receipt of even noncash benefits would otherwise generally be relevant to a public charge determination. But 8 U.S.C. § 1182(s) was added in 2000, shortly after INS issued its 1999 Guidance in which it clarified that benefits like TANF and SSI would be relevant for the public charge determination. See Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-386, § 1505(f), 114 Stat. 1464, 1526. Without § 1182(s), survivors of domestic violence could thus have had their receipt of cash benefits used against them. By far the most natural reading of § 1182(s) is that Congress was preventing domestic violence victims from being penalized under the then-existing framework. In any event, the statute concerns what is relevant to the determination, and gives no indication that Congress 78 somehow understood that the receipt of the benefits covered by the 1999 Guidance, let alone a broader set of benefits, could categorically render noncitizens who were not domestic violence survivors “public charges.” Once again, what is impermissible in DHS’s interpretation is not that it renders receipt of supplemental non-cash benefits relevant to a non-citizen’s classification as a public charge, but rather that it makes the receipt of such benefits determinative. Second, DHS argues that the provisions requiring affidavits of support for family-based immigrants and allowing the government to seek reimbursement from the sponsor for any means-tested public benefit used by the non-citizen support its interpretation. DHS contends that these provisions show that Congress considered any non-citizen who might receive an unreimbursed public benefit in the future a likely public charge. See 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182(a)(4)(c)(ii), 1183a(b)(1)(A). We are not convinced that the affidavit reimbursement mechanism shows congressional intent to broaden the meaning of “public charge.” For one thing, not all immigrants have to provide affidavits of support; the requirement is limited to family-based immigrants and we see no reason it 79 should be taken to alter the underlying terms that apply to all non-citizens.32 We also note that the statute includes a corollary, allowing the non-citizen herself to take the sponsor to court if the sponsor fails to support the non-citizen as promised. See id. § 1183a(a)(1)(B). The reimbursement provision thus serves primarily as a mechanism to get sponsors to take their commitments seriously by making them legally enforceable, a longstanding point of concern. See S. REP. NO. 81-1515, at 347 (Senate Judiciary Committee Report from 1950 critiquing the affidavit of support as an unenforceable document that “at most, appears to be merely a moral obligation upon the affiant”). Third and last, DHS looks to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (“IRCA”) to support its claim that the Rule is consistent with congressional intent. IRCA established an ad hoc legalization program for undocumented immigrants. See 8 U.S.C. § 1255a. To qualify for legalization, applicants needed to prove that most of the grounds of inadmissibility did not apply to them, including the public charge ground. See id. § 1255a(a)(4), (d)(2). However, IRCA established a “special rule” with respect to the public charge inquiry, under 32 The affidavit of support requirement is also applied to a small subset of employment-based immigrants, where the non-citizen’s prospective employer is a relative or an entity owned in large part by a relative. 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(4)(D). 80 which a non-citizen would not be deemed a likely public charge “if the alien demonstrates a history of employment in the United States evidencing selfsupport without receipt of public cash assistance.” Id. § 1255a(d)(2)(B)(iii). DHS argues that because the IRCA special rule specifically incorporates only cash assistance, the generic ground in § 1182(a)(4) must necessarily have a broader reach. The implementing regulations of IRCA, however, suggest that, rather than refining the benefits relevant to the public charge inquiry, the special rule allowed a non-citizen who may otherwise be deemed a likely public charge because of his limited financial resources an additional manner of showing selfsufficiency. The relevant regulations provide that a non-citizen “who has a consistent employment history which shows the ability to support himself or herself even though his or her income may be below the poverty level, may be admissible.” 8 C.F.R. § 245a.2(k)(4). Accordingly, even if an applicant was “determined likely to become a public charge[,]” adjudicators were to find a noncitizen inadmissible on this ground only if he was “unable to overcome this determination after application of the special rule” and consideration of his employment history. Id. § 245a.2(d)(4). The BIA applied the IRCA special rule in 81 Matter of A-, reversing a public charge finding that put too much weight on the applicant’s “financial circumstances” in the face of “the more important factors; namely, that the applicant has now joined the work force, . . . is young, and . . . has no physical or mental defects which might affect her earning capacity.” 19 I. & N. Dec. at 870. In other words, the BIA read the IRCA special rule as fully consistent with the long-standing view that the ultimate issue in defining a “public charge” is the non-citizen’s anticipated ability, over a protracted period, to be able to work to support himself or herself. IRCA and its implementing regulations thus show that Congress continued to emphasize capacity for work as a core element of the public charge ground. All three of these statutory arguments share a common flaw. DHS attempts to justify a sweeping redefinition of “public charge” by pointing to tangential details within the extensive patchwork that makes up American immigration law – none of which express any intention by Congress to revise or depart from the settled meaning of the term “public charge.” DHS’s argument that these statutory provisions are “consistent” with its interpretation is of no relevance. The question is whether, by passing these statutes, Congress undertook to change the long-established meaning of public charge. While the statutes to which DHS 82 points may be “consistent” with the meaning DHS has assigned to public charge, they are no less consistent with the long established meaning of public charge that DHS seeks to overturn. These enactments do nothing to demonstrate that Congress changed the meaning of public charge. The arguments thus “run[ ] afoul of the usual rule that Congress does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions – it does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.” Epic Sys., 138 S. Ct. at 1626-27 (internal quotation marks omitted). We conclude that the Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their argument that the Rule is contrary to the INA. In reenacting the public charge ground in 1996, Congress endorsed the settled administrative and judicial interpretation of that ground as requiring a holistic examination of a non-citizen’s self-sufficiency focused on ability to work and eschewing any idea that simply receiving welfare benefits made one a public charge. The Rule makes receipt of a broad range of public benefits on even a short-term basis the very definition of “public charge.” That exceedingly broad definition is not in accordance with the law. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). 83