Federal judge overturns parole in place program benefitting undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens

A federal judge on Thursday struck down the Biden administration’s ‘parole in place’ program, which granted legal status to almost half a million undocumented immigrants for being spouses of U.S. citizens, as well as an estimated 50,000 undocumented stepchildren of American citizens.

In his Thursday ruling, U.S. District Judge Campbell Barker, appointed by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term, said that Congress had not given the executive branch authority to implement such a policy. He opined that “history and purpose confirm that defendants’ view” of the relevant immigration law “stretches legal interpretation past its breaking point.”

The same judge previously kept the policy in place at the end of August.

Since then however, Barker opined that the Dept. of Homeland Security did not have legal authority under the U.S. Immigration andNationality Act to grant “parole in place” to immigrants applying to the Keeping Families Together program.

🚨🚨🚨
WE BEAT BIDEN AND HARRIS IN COURT.

We have officially stopped their illegal attempt to grant mass amnesty to over 1 million illegal aliens. pic.twitter.com/SYlDdyFRR0

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) November 8, 2024

Biden announced the policy in June, which simplified the path to citizenship for immigrants married to or hosted by American citizens.

A few days later, 16 U.S. states filed a lawsuit saying the Biden-Harris administration's policy is costing them millions of dollars in public services used by immigrants, including health care, education and law enforcement.

For those same reasons, on Sept. 13, a panel of judges from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a federal court in Texas to “administratively suspend” all proceedings related to the “parole in place” program.   

Despite the ruling, the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) continued to accept I-131F enrollment forms for “certain non-citizen spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens,” but the federal agency could not process or adjudicate the applications for parole.

The “parole in place” authorized, in its effective period, some 550,000 undocumented immigrants married to citizens or their stepchildren (all of them without legal admission) to complete the adjustment of their immigration statuses and receive a green card within the United States.

The benefit made it possible to skip the consular process and avoid jeopardizing the return to the United States since undocumented immigrants are typically subject to penalties for illegal entry.

“Individuals who accrue a certain amount of time of unlawful presence are inadmissible, or ineligible to receive a visa or adjust their status. Remaining in the U.S. without authorization for more than 180 days but less than a year triggers a three-year bar, more than one year is a ten-year bar,” according to a policy brief from fwd.us, a self-described 501c4 charity organization.

Reactions to the new ruling in the wake of Trump’s recent victory were immediate and celebratory.

America First Legal, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of 15 plaintiff-states, was one of the first to share its reaction on social networks.

“We just WON our lawsuit along with Ken Paxton, Raul Labrador and a coalition of 14 states. We have officially STOPPED the Biden-Harris Administration's illegal attempt to grant mass amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens,” the legal team said on the X social media platform.

🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨

We just WON our lawsuit with @KenPaxtonTX, @Raul_Labrador, and a coalition of 14 states. We have officially STOPPED the Biden-Harris Administration’s illegal attempt to grant mass amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. pic.twitter.com/gyfLfPouw7

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) November 7, 2024

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those sentiments on the social media platform.

“Once again, we have stopped the Biden-Harris Administration’s radical attempts to destroy America’s borders and undermine the rule of law. This unlawful parole scheme would have rewarded more than 1 million illegal aliens with citizenship and incentivized millions more to break into our country. I look forward to the day when the federal government starts following the law again,” Paxton tweeted.

CNN estimated that the program could directly affect 750,000 to 800,000 people. “That could have made it the federal government’s most sweeping relief program since the 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which shields undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as minors from deportation,” the national cable news network reported.