A federal judge in Texas has frozen President Joe Biden’s attempt to offer a path to citizenship to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens and living in the United States illegally, dealing a blow to a program the administration has touted as a key “pro-family” initiative.
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U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker sided with Texas and 15 other Republican-led states that sued to block the program; they argued Biden’s move was an abuse of executive authority that sought to rewrite U.S. immigration laws.
Barker issued a 14-day administrative pause on approving applications to the program, with the possibility of an extension, and scheduled additional hearings over the coming weeks.
“The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” wrote Barker, a Trump appointee who was a deputy solicitor general in Texas before joining the bench. His order allows the government to continue receiving applications during the stay.
“As with most administrative stays, the court has simply undertaken a screening, ‘first-blush’ review of the claims and what is at stake in the dispute,” wrote Barker. The case was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, part of the conservative-leaning 5th Circuit, which has become the most popular judicial district for Biden opponents seeking to block Democratic programs.
Biden officials say as many as 500,000 couples would benefit from the “parole in place” offer, which was announced in June and accepted applications starting Aug. 19. It makes use of executive “parole” authority to grant a path to legal residency for immigrants who meet certain requirements — including 10 years of continuous presence in the United States, a clean criminal record and marriage to a U.S. citizen before June 17.
Applicants who are approved receive work authorization and have three years to apply for permanent residency.
They would otherwise be required to first leave the United States and apply to reenter to get permanent residency, a process that can take months or years during which a family would be separated.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led the challenge to Biden’s program, celebrated Barker’s order and credited support from America First Legal, the conservative advocacy group founded by former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
“Biden’s unconstitutional scheme would have rewarded over 1 million illegal aliens with the opportunity for citizenship after breaking our country’s laws — and incentivized countless more,” Paxton wrote on X. “We are going to keep fighting for Texas, our country, and the rule of law.”
The administration called Biden’s initiative “Keeping Families Together,” a not-too-subtle dig at the Trump administration’s Zero Tolerance prosecution push — orchestrated in part by Miller — that separated more than 3,000 migrant children from their parents along the southern border in 2018.
In deciding to halt the initiative for now, Barker said the fact that spouses eligible for the program have not left the United States during the past 10 years creates “a minimal risk that requiring them to wait a short, additional period will cause a departure from the country during this short stay.”
But Karen Tumlin, an immigration attorney who is the founder and director of the Justice Action Center, called Barker’s ruling “an extreme measure that — by law — should only be taken in the most urgent of situations.”
“To halt a process for which Texas has not been able to provide an iota of evidence that it would harm the state is baffling,” Tumlin said in a statement. “This is heart-breaking for our clients and the thousands of couples who hope to benefit from this process and be able to live without fear that their family will be separated.”
The case is the State of Texas et al. vs the Department of Homeland Security et al
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