A federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas on Monday temporarily blocked a Biden administration program that allows undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens to apply for a green card without leaving the U.S.
The program, which the White House calls Keeping Families Together, would provide a form of legal assistance known as “parole in place” to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who can prove they have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least 10 years and meet a host of other requirements.
Normally, undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens must leave the country to apply for a green card and eventually citizenship, risking years of or even permanent separation from their families. Parole would have allowed them to apply without leaving the U.S.
The White House estimated that 500,000 people were eligible for the program, and federal immigration authorities began accepting applications on Aug. 19. But Republican attorneys general for Texas and 15 other states filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to halt the program, prompting a judge to temporarily block it.
In filing the lawsuit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the program “directly violates the laws created by Congress.”
U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker wrote in his ruling that the states’ claims “are substantial and warrant further consideration than this court has been able to give to date.”
Barker’s ruling orders the government to stop granting parole under the program, but it does not instruct the government to stop receiving applications. Immigrants can still apply for the program, but their applications will not be processed until the moratorium is lifted.
The states that filed the lawsuit were represented by America First Legal, the group founded and led by Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump and architect of many of his administration’s immigration policies. Miller called Monday’s ruling a “huge victory” in a press release.
Immigrants hoping to benefit from the program expressed fear and frustration. “This is heartbreaking,” said Foday Turay, who was brought to the U.S. from Sierra Leone as a child and now works as a prosecutor for the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.
Turay was one of the immigrants who filed a motion Monday to intervene in the lawsuit to defend the program alongside the Justice Department. He is married to an American woman from New Jersey, with whom he has a 1-year-old son.
“My wife and I really depended on this to be able to move on with our lives and plan our future,” he said. “It feels like a knife in my heart.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
