his appointment was invalid. On March 1, 2020 US District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss ruled that Cuccinelli was not lawfully appointed to serve as acting director and therefore lacked authority to issue two of the directives challenged in the lawsuit. Because the case was not filed as a class action, Moss was "unconvinced" that his relief should be extended to other asylum seekers not part of the original suit. On August 12, 2020, the government dropped its appeal in the case. Tenure in office In July 2019, Cuccinelli blamed an asylum seeker for the asylum seeker's own death and that of his daughter who were found dead on the banks of the Rio Grande River. He said, "The reason we have tragedies like that on the border is because those folks, that father didn't want to wait to go through the asylum process in the legal fashion, so decided to cross the river". He said in an interview that the administration is prepared to deport approximately 1 million undocumented immigrants who have final removal orders already in place. On August 12, 2019, Cuccinelli announced a revised regulation, to go into effect October 15, 2019, expanding the public charge requirements for legal immigration. Green cards and visas can be denied if people are likely to need federal, state and local government benefits including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid. When asked whether this change contradicted the poem welcoming the impoverished and persecuted engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, Cuccinelli offered a revision, "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge." The original poem, Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus", states "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Cuccinelli asserted the new requirements were consistent with the public charge laws, which first passed in 1882: the same era as the poem. He further asserted that the poem referred to European immigrants, though these assertions were disputed by Lazarus's biographer. In October 2019, Ken Cuccinelli testified to a Congressional investigation that he alone had made the decision to end the medical deferred action program, a decision which he reversed after public outcry, and complaints from some patients in the U.S. for medical care that they would die if deported to their home