Texas Court Challenges Biden’s Program Allowing Venezuelan and Other Migrants
The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policy Faces Legal Challenge in Texas
The Biden administration’s immigration policy is currently being contested in court in Houston, Texas. A coalition of Republican-led states is challenging a policy that allows parole in the United States for thousands of citizens of Central America and the Caribbean.
The immigration policy in question is a humanitarian parole program that releases tens of thousands of individuals into the United States every month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Texas is leading a group of 21 states that are seeking to stop the program. The lawsuit argues that the Biden administration’s policy constitutes executive overreach and should be halted.
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In court documents, Texas and other states have referred to the Biden administration’s program as an “extreme example” of the administration’s failure to enforce immigration laws that require parole to be granted only on a case-by-case basis for significant public benefit or urgent humanitarian reasons.
Interestingly, while the Republican states’ lawsuit objects to the use of humanitarian parole for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, they have not raised any objections to the use of humanitarian parole to admit tens of thousands of Ukrainians during the Russian invasion.
Details of the Lawsuit
Texas has also argued that the parole program causes financial damage because the state must provide services to paroled migrants, such as detention, educational, social, and driver’s license programs.
The trial of the states’ lawsuit is being presided over by U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton in Victoria, Texas. Judge Tipton, who was appointed by Donald Trump, has previously ruled against the Biden administration regarding deportation priorities. Immigrant rights organizations have also joined the legal proceedings on behalf of seven individuals who are sponsoring immigrants.
These organizations have defended the humanitarian parole program, stating that it provides a safe route to the United States for desperate migrants who would otherwise fall victim to human traffickers and hinder border agents. They argue that the program is also helping to reduce the humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The trial, which was scheduled to last two days, was livestreamed from Victoria to a federal courtroom in Houston. Judge Tipton is expected to render a decision at a later date.
Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department, representing the federal government in the lawsuit, have stated in court documents that the program has been “tremendously successful at reducing migration to the southwest border.”
According to some estimates, as of the end of July, more than 72,000 Haitians, 63,000 Venezuelans, 41,000 Cubans, and 34,000 Nicaraguans had been vetted and authorized to come to the U.S. through the parole program. This program is facilitated through the CBP One app, which can allegedly be used from anywhere in the world.
Impact of the Program
However, these figures about program usage have been contradicted by Andrew Arthur, a Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former immigration judge.
Arthur recently cited data from an NBC News report from February of this year, which stated that up to that point, 588,000 people had been paroled into the United States.
During a panel conducted by The Center for Immigration Studies on August 23, Arthur and Mark Morgan, former Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), discussed the parole program. Arthur claimed that the more than half a million parolees have joined a “gigantic queue of people who were simply going to get the sheet of paper” that would allow them to go through the proper legal process for their immigration status.
Arthur also asserted that some aliens are being given appointment dates as far out as 2032 to visit an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and obtain documentation for their proper proceedings.
“One of the things that you hear a lot from the Biden administration is that the Trump administration broke the immigration system, broke the asylum system,” Arthur said. “I served under Obama, Mark [Morgan] served under Obama and Trump. Trump didn’t really do anything that Obama didn’t do first … This is literally breaking the system.”
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