The Biden administration’s immigration policy is being contested in court in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 24. A coalition of Republican-led states are challenging a policy that allows parole in the United States for thousands of citizens of Central America and the Caribbean.
The immigration policy is a humanitarian parole program that allows tens of thousands of individuals to be released into the United States every month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Texas is leading 21 states that want to stop the program. The suit argues that the Biden administration’s policy constitutes executive overreach and should be stopped.
In court documents, Texas and other states have referred to the Biden administration’s program as an “extreme example” of the administration’s failure to enforce immigration laws that require it to “grant parole only on a case-by-case basis for significant public benefit or urgent humanitarian reasons.”
Suit Details
Texas has also argued that the parole program causes financial damage because the state must provide services to paroled migrants, such as detention, educational, social, and driver’s license programs.U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton is presiding over the trial of the states’ lawsuit in Victoria, Texas. Appointed by Donald Trump, Tipton has previously ruled against the Biden administration regarding deportation priorities. The legal proceedings were joined by immigrant rights organizations on behalf of seven individuals who are sponsoring immigrants.
Immigrant rights organizations have defended the humanitarian parole program, arguing that it provides a safe route to the United States for desperate migrants who would otherwise pay human traffickers and impede border agents. According to the organizations, the program is also reducing the humanitarian crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The trial was scheduled to last two days and be livestreamed from Victoria to a federal courtroom in Houston. Tipton was anticipated to render a decision at a later date.
Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department, which is representing the federal government in the lawsuit, wrote in court documents that the program has been “tremendously successful at reducing migration to the southwest border.”
Impact of the Program
However, figures about program usage were contradicted by Andrew Arthur, who is a Resident Fellow in Law and Policy at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former immigration judge.Mr. Arthur made his comments during an Aug. 23 panel conducted by The Center for Immigration Studies, which also featured Mark Morgan, former Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
According to Mr. Arthur, the more than half a million parolees have made their way into a “gigantic queue of people who were simply going to get the sheet of paper” that would allow them to take part in the correct legal process for their immigration status.
The panelist also asserted that some aliens are being given dates as far out as 2032 to have an appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office to get documentation to put them into the proper proceedings.
“One of the things that you hear a lot of the Biden administration is that the Trump administration broke the immigration system, broke the asylum system,” Mr. Arthur said. “I served under Obama, Mark [Morgan] served under Obama and Trump. Trump didn’t really do anything that Obama didn’t do first ... This is literally breaking the asylum system.”
Later in his comments, the former immigration judge spoke to the asylum claims from individuals in fear for their lives who are being delayed in the system due to illegitimate claims, such as the ones coming through the parole system: “If you believe in asylum and believe in, you know, the Statue of Liberty holding the torch to the nation, this is the exact opposite.”
During his address, the former CBP commissioner stated that the use of the CBP One app to allow anyone born in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply for parole in the United States is a miscarriage of justice.
“That itself is a circumvention of the law,” Mr. Morgan said of the program. According to the former CBP official, that program was meant to be used “on a case-by-case” basis with a “specific purpose for a specific public benefit or humanitarian purpose. Being born in a country does not satisfy that lawful requirement.”
“What this administration is doing knowingly and with intent, they’re allowing our laws to continue to be exploited and letting them come through the front door as they look the other way, and then they’re calling it a legal pathway. It’s a perversion and violation of the law.”
A CBP spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement about Mr. Morgan’s comments that the CBP One application requires the user’s device location services and GPS data to “verify their location before booking and confirming an appointment“ and that they updated the app in May of this year to “improve functionality and enhance security.”
