A federal judge has dismissed Texas and 20 other states’ lawsuit that aimed to challenge President Biden’s immigration parole policy. The policy in question, also known as humanitarian parole, is designed to grant temporary legal immigration status to up to 30,000 asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The plan provides a legitimate pathway for people from these countries to avoid illegally entering the US and has been an integral part of the current administration’s efforts to manage the increasing flow of migrants at the southern US border. JURIST – News reported these details.
According to the case documents, Texas, along with the other states, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration last year. They argued that it imposed significant financial costs on them due to the need to provide healthcare, education, public safety, and enforcement services to the migrants. The states also contended that the administration failed to follow the required notice and comment rulemaking procedures before implementing the rule and that the policy exceeded the administration’s jurisdiction.
However, Judge Drew B. Tipton of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas has ruled that the plaintiffs (the states) did not prove they had legal standing to advance any of these arguments. In his ruling, he stated that the number of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) nationals entering the US has drastically decreased by as much as 44% since the implementation of the program. Consequently, he concluded that the plaintiffs were unable to demonstrate that they had been negatively affected by the program and therefore lacked standing to bring their claims.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas praised the court’s ruling and emphasized that the program is a key element of efforts to address the unprecedented level of migration occurring not only in our hemisphere but globally.
The US has leveraged parole authority to address migratory influxes in the past, including facilitating the admission of Hungarian refugees after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet Union, the entry of Cuban refugees post the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s, and Chinese refugees who escaped from communist China to Hong Kong in the 1960s. As recently as April 2022, the Biden administration introduced a humanitarian parole program specifically for Ukrainians. US Citizenship and Immigration Services offers more detail about the various applications of parole authority throughout US history.