Imagine this scenario: It is 2023, and a woman we’ll call Jessica and her husband, Pedro, make the difficult decision to leave Venezuela for the United States after they become targets of political repression. Soon after their arrival, they apply for asylum.

While their case winds through the immigration system, Jessica and Pedro are thrilled to learn that Jessica is pregnant. But they also worry about the cost of prenatal care. Their jobs picking fruit on a farm don’t provide health insurance, and they cannot afford to pay for the care themselves.

They learn about a government program that provides free prenatal care, but their friends and co-workers tell them to be careful about “taking” anything from the government, lest it affect their immigration status.

Ultimately, they go without care. Jessica feels fine until the last trimester of her pregnancy, when she goes into labor early and has an emergency hysterectomy. They later find that pesticide exposure on the job may have caused the birth complications – something she could have avoided had she been warned about it in a prenatal care appointment.

Several months later, they learn that enrolling in the program providing prenatal care would not have affected their asylum application at all.

This kind of ordeal is very common.

About 1 in 7 immigrants across the country don’t apply for government benefits even if they are eligible for them. Examples of these programs may include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income people buy groceries, and Medicaid, a federal health insurance program for low-income people.

Many immigrants fear that enrolling in these programs, even if they qualify for them, will make it harder for them to stay here legally.

Their fears are often unfounded because historically the government has penalized immigrants for using only certain benefits.

But that could change soon because the Department of Homeland Security finalized a new rule on July 16, 2026. The rule reinterprets a provision in the Immigration Act of 1882 that allows immigration officers to deny the immigration applications of anyone they........

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