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Judge Tosses Out Biden Program For Undocumented Spouses

U.S.|Judge Tosses Out Biden Program for Undocumented Spouses

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/biden-undocumented-spouses-program.html

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The ruling issued by a federal judge in Texas struck down a new initiative aimed at helping undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens stay in the country.

President Biden speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House.
President Biden on Thursday. When the initiative was announced, Mr. Biden had hailed it as a way to keep families together and offer them the comfort of knowing they would avoid deportation.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

Hamed Aleaziz

Nov. 7, 2024, 9:00 p.m. ET

A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a new Biden administration program that sought to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to American citizens.

The ruling, issued by Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, came months after 16 Republican-led states, led by Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit claiming that the administration lacked the legal authority to enact the program. In August, Judge Barker temporarily blocked the initiative, just days after it had gone into place.

On Thursday, in a 74-page decision, he explained that the Biden administration did not have the authority to create the program, which would have been unlikely to remain in place after President-elect Trump took office in January.

The Biden administration started the initiative, known as Keeping Families Together, in August, allowing undocumented immigrants who were married to U.S. citizens and had been in the United States for 10 years or more a chance to gain a green card without leaving the country.

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Read the Judge’s Ruling

A federal judge in Texas struck down a new Biden administration program that sought to provide a path to U.S. citizenship for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to American citizens.

Read Document 74 pages

Generally, immigrants who have entered the United States illegally must leave the country to complete the green card process, which can take years. The Biden program, which was in place for a week, allowed those who were married to U.S. citizens to remain in the country by granting them what the immigration system refers to as “parole,” a status that also protected them from deportation.


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