Aug. 27 (UPI) — A federal judge on Monday has issued a temporary block of a new Biden administration rule to allow noncitizen spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency while in the United States.
The new rule is known as parole in place and is part of the Biden administration’s Keeping Families Together program that was announced by the Department of Homeland Security mid-June and was implemented Aug. 19.
To be eligible, an applicant must be married to a U.S. citizen and have resided in the United States for at least 10 years. The federal government estimates that some 500,000 spouses could be eligible for the program. It said that of the potentially eligible spouses, on average they have resided in the United States for 23 years.
Conservatives and Republicans have criticized the rule for unlawfully creating a pathway to citizenship, and 16 GOP Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration on Friday, asking a federal district judge in Texas for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the federal government from enforcing it.
The lawsuit accuses the Biden administration of attempting to circumvent the immigration system created by Congress to put in place an immigration system of its own.
The attorneys general argued the program will cause their states” quantifiable financial harm” that will be illuminated during the discovery phase of litigation.
“The Plaintiff States cannot recover their increased costs from the federal government, which they would otherwise not incur if the federal government enforced the law,” they state in the lawsuit. “This affects each State’s sovereign interests in its territory and its ability to properly carry out such interests on behalf of its citizens.”
U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker of the Eastern District of Texas on Monday granted the states’ request, putting a temporary 14-day block on the parole in place rule that can be extended. Barker also ordered for expedited proceedings on preliminary and permanent relief in the case.
“The claims are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date,” Barker wrote in the ruling.
Barker added that the ruling while stopping the government from granting parole it does not prevent it from accepting applications.
“So this administrative stay does not apply to the agency’s creation of a process for seeking parol in place under the rule,” he wrote.
America First Legal, a conservative public interest organization founded by former senior advisor to Donald Trump when he served as president, celebrated the ruling. The organization had filed the lawsuit along with the 16 Republican-led states.
“This is a huge victory,” Miller said in a statement that described the parol-in-place rule as a Biden administration “executive fiat.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the ruling is “just the first step.”
“We are going to keep fighting for Texas, our country and the rule of law,” he said on X.