A group of undocumented immigrants and their families are trying to intervene in federal court to defend the Biden administration’s new program.
The White House’s program, called Keeping Families Together, It offers a form of legal aid known as “parole” to nearly half a million undocumented spouses of US citizens, makes it easier for them to apply for permanent residence and citizenship. Republican states led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Friday to end the program.
In response, six undocumented immigrants who would be eligible for parole with their U.S. citizen spouses filed a petition Monday to join the government in defending the program in federal court. They were joined by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit.
“It’s just absurd to me why Texas would file a lawsuit that would tear my family apart,” said Foday Turay, one of the immigrants seeking to intervene in the case. Turay was brought to the United States as a child from Sierra Leone, where his family fled civil war. He is now a practicing attorney for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. She is married to an American citizen from New Jersey, with whom she has a 1-year-old son.
“I have been waiting for a program like this for more than a decade,” said Turay. “You live in a country where you have paid taxes for years, but you still have to face the fear of being cut off from your family and community – when will this fear stop?”
Undocumented immigrants married to US citizens can apply to legalize their status, but they usually have to leave the country first, risking years or even permanent separation from their families. For this reason, many prefer to remain undocumented. The parole program allows them to apply for a green card and eventually citizenship without leaving the country.
Applicants must prove that they have lived continuously in the United States for 10 years and that they are married to an American citizen before the program is announced on June 17. They also have to pass a criminal background check – some misdemeanors are disqualifying, as are domestic violence and most drug offenses.
In announcing the lawsuit, the Texas Attorney General said the parole program “directly violates laws created by Congress.”
“Under the leadership of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the federal government is actively working to make the United States a country without borders and without laws,” Paxton said. “This [program] violates the constitution and actively worsens the scourge of illegal immigration that harms Texas and our country.”
Along with Texas, the states suing the federal government are Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.
They are being assisted by America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller, then-President Donald Trump’s chief counsel and architect of many of his administration’s immigration policies.
Calling the program “executive amnesty,” Miller said, “This is brazenly illegal, a deadly catalyst for a destructive border invasion, and we will use every legal means to stop it.”
The lawsuit was filed in Tyler, a small city in east Texas, in a division of federal district courts whose two judges were appointed by Trump. The case was assigned to Judge J. Campbell Barker.
If Barker grants the motion to intervene, the immigrants and their legal counsel will be directly involved as defendants in the lawsuit. While the federal government will defend the program on behalf of its agencies, immigrants and their advocates will defend it based on their own personal interests.
“If we hadn’t intervened, the judge wouldn’t have considered the voices or experiences of people who were up for parole from Keeping Families Together,” said Esther Sung, legal director of the Justice Action Center. Make the Road represents immigrants alongside New York.
In addition to its potentially transformative impact on the lives of immigrants and their families, the parole program could sway some voters in the November election. The pro-immigration group FWD.us estimates that about 60,000 people who qualify for the program live in swing states — though they can’t vote, but their citizen spouses can.
But the lawsuit puts the program in immediate jeopardy. Texas and other states are asking Barker to immediately suspend the program while the courts hear the case.
Controversies about its effect on states
In support of the lawsuit, 16 Republican attorneys general argue that the parole program is causing irreparable harm to their states, mainly because undocumented immigrants cost the states money in education, health care and other expenses, and that a similar program does. one would stimulate future unauthorized immigration.
Sung, an attorney with the Justice Action Center, said the group intends to challenge claims that states will be harmed by the program. The group successfully deployed a similar legal strategy when it intervened to defend a different Biden administration program that offered parole to some immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. In March, a judge appointed by Trump rejected a challenge to the program brought by the state of Texas on similar grounds.
The question of whether undocumented immigrants have a net fiscal cost or benefit is controversial, with different analysts reaching different conclusions and often crossing ideological lines.
But Turay says he and other immigrants who qualify for parole tend to be well-established taxpayers in their communities, given the program’s requirement that applicants live in the country for 10 years. According to White House estimates, applicants have lived in the United States for an average of more than 20 years.
Turay himself relies mostly on tax receipts to prove residency. “Most of the people who apply, we’ve been paying taxes for years — mortgages, wages,” he said. “Here’s what we show for proof: ten years of paid taxes.”