Keeping Families Together (Biden Parole) - Vacated
On November 7, 2024, the Eastern District of Texas ruled that Keeping Families Together (Biden Parole-in-Place) exceeded DHS’s legal authority and cannot continue. In summary, the program is dead.
Technically, DHS might still appeal the Texas court’s decision, sending the issue to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; however, it is unlikely that such appeal would be completed prior to president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. We expect him to simply order DHS to withdraw any such appeal, thereby completely killing the program.
Here’s the history of the Keeping Families Together program until now:
6/18/2024 - as multiple news outlets have already reported, President Joe Biden announced that the White House will issue an executive order to provide a streamlined path to temporary work authorization and permanent residence for certain immigrants, to be called Keeping Families Together (aka Biden Parole).
8/19/2024 - the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services began accepting applications for the Biden Parole-in-Place program.
8/23/2024 - 16 Republican states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit against the program, because apparently the Republican Party does not want to make our federal government more efficient.
8/26/2024 - Eastern District of Texas Judge J. Campbell Barker issued an administrative stay on the program.
8/26/2024 - a group of individuals seeking benefits under the Biden program filed a motion to intervene (join) in the lawsuit filed by the Republican attorneys general who challenged the program in the Eastern District of Texas court case, Texas et. al. vs. DHS et. al., Case No. 6:24-cv-00306 (E.D. Tex.).
9/3/2024 - the Texas judge denied the motion to intervene, so the intervening parties appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
9/11/2024 - the Fifth Circuit ordered (told) the Texas district court to pause proceedings until the Fifth Circuit resolves the motion to intervene appeal.
10/4/2024 - the Fifth Circuit denied a motion to intervene filed by mixed-status families and the District Court issued an order reimposing the 10/26/2024 temporary stay and issued a restraining order that should expire on 11/8/2024.
10/28/2024 - the District Court issued notice on the trial set for 11/5/2024.
11/7/2024 - the Eastern District of Texas (District Court) found that DHS lacks standing to grant parole under the circumstances set forth in the policy. In plain language, the court said that the program was unlawful, and that parole applications should not be processed.
Note that the rules of the Biden Parole program do not create a new pathway to citizenship; they simply reduce bureaucratic red tape that causes U.S. government agencies to duplicate their efforts, resulting in many years of life waiting simply on final decisions for benefits that the applicants already qualify for. While the republicans claim that the Biden administration’s parole program is for “blatant” political purposes, it is clear that this lawsuit was the blatantly political stunt.
This program was good and narrowly-tailored to simply streamline a process already in existence.
Now that the American voters have re-elected Donald Trump, despite him clearly being unfit for any public office, we can all expect a less humane, less sane, more frustrating, more complicated legal process in almost every area of life, but immigration law will be especially hard-hit. God help us all.
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