A Texas judge ruled against the Biden-Harris administration’s plan to grant mass amnesty to up to one million illegal immigrant spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens on Thursday.
According to The Post Millennial, Thursday’s ruling by Judge J. Campbell Barker determined that the Biden-Harris administration’s amnesty plan was not valid because the Department of Homeland Security did not have the authority to implement the mass amnesty program. The outlet reported that the administration’s Keeping Families Together program would have allowed illegal immigrant spouses and stepchildren to “parole in place” and remain in the United States despite entering the country illegally.
Barker stated, “The court declares that defendants lack statutory authority… to grant parole ‘in place’ to aliens, as that term is used in the final agency action…, or to deem parole ‘in place’ as use there be parole ‘into the United States’… That agency action is hereby set aside and vacated.”
Thursday’s court filing showed that 16 states led by Texas and America First Legal brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over a rule that “creates a process allowing foreign nationals to be paroled ‘in place’… if [they] are present in the country illegally and are qualifying spouses or stepchildren of US citizens. Implementation of Keeping Families Together.”
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According to The Post Millennial, the Department of Homeland Security previously announced that the Keeping Families Together program was part of President Joe Biden’s “commitment to promoting family unity in the immigration system” and that the program would create a “process for certain noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens to request parole in place under existing statutory authority.”
The Post Millennial reported that the Keeping Families Together program would have allowed individuals who illegally entered the United States and were married or had stepchildren who were U.S. citizens to be granted parole even if they had not properly applied for parole.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services estimated that roughly 500,000 non-citizen spouses of U.S. citizens and 50,000 non-citizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens would have been impacted by the Keeping Families Together Program. However, Fox News reported that the 16 states that challenged the Biden-Harris administration warned that over 1.3 million illegal immigrants could have been granted amnesty under the program.
Following Thursday’s lawsuit win against the Biden-Harris administration, America First Legal tweeted, “We just WON our lawsuit 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.”
