President Biden stretched the law with his “parole” program to give special breaks to immigrants who are in the country illegally and married to U.S. citizens, a federal judge has ruled.
The ruling is another blow to Mr. Biden’s plans to try to give migrants protections against a future administration’s deportation plans.
U.S. District Judge Campbell Barker said Thursday the administration took a law designed to grant leniency to unauthorized migrants who showed up at the border with exceptional cases, such as medical emergencies, and turned it into a mass-forgiveness for immigrants who’d already been living here illegally for a decade.
The program had been on hold but Judge Barker, in his new ruling, struck down the policy altogether.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led the lawsuit, said it was a needed rebuke for Mr. Biden.
“Once again we have stopped the Biden-Harris administration’s radical attempts to destroy America’s borders and undermine the rule of law,” he said. “I look forward to the day when the federal government starts following the law again.”
Mr. Biden had announced the program this summer, saying it would cover about a half-million unauthorized immigrants married to U.S. citizens, and also cover about 50,000 children of the migrant spouses.
The administration justified the program by saying the unauthorized immigrants already have a pathway to citizenship through their marriage, but in the usual course of events they would have to return to their home country to complete that path.
Mr. Biden said his parole program would allow them to stay in the U.S. and complete the process from here without taking the risk of going home and being blocked from coming back.
Judge Barker said that might be a good policy goal, but he said the parole law written by Congress doesn’t stretch that far.
Under the law, parole is only to be granted on a case-by-case basis in exceptional circumstances, such as when someone needs an emergency medical procedure or the government wants to use the person in a criminal investigation.
Judge Barker said the law also only applies to newcomers at the border.
Mr. Biden’s program, though, applied to migrants who’d been in the country for at least a decade.
Judge Barker, who sits in eastern Texas, also said the migrants never had to prove they were facing exceptional circumstances.
“The Rule exceeds statutory authority and is not in accordance with law for this reason as well,” he wrote.
Immigration advocates called the decision a “blow” to the migrants’ hopes, and urged an appeal.
“It’s far past time for our leaders to stop playing politics with people’s lives, and for the courts to rectify this injustice,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.
If the administration were to appeal, it would likely be short-lived, given the looming Trump administration, which would almost certainly cancel the appeal.
Mr. Biden has been profligate with his use of parole, using it to welcome millions of unauthorized migrants over his term.
Among his parole programs is one for Afghan evacuees; one for Ukrainians; one for Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans; and one for migrants of varying nationalities who show up in northern Mexico and pre-schedule their arrivals at the U.S. border.
Thursday’s ruling doesn’t affect those programs.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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