by Ben Whedon
A group of 20 Republican-led states are suing the Biden administration over its migrant program that allows a set monthly amount of migrants to enter the U.S. from select countries.
Texas, supported by 19 other states and America First Legal, filed the suit asserting that the Department of Homeland Security had effectively created a visa program without congressional approval “by announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to be ‘paroled’ into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization.”
The states cited congressional limits on the DHS’s parole authority, asserting that it can only issue parole on a case-by-case basis and that the agency lacked the authority to authorize the new program. Moreover, they state that DHS ignored the mandatory notice-and-comment rulemaking requirement outlined in the Administrative Procedure Act and that the plaintiff states would suffer irreparable harm should the policy go forward.
Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 4 million illegal migrants have entered the United States, with a record 2.4 million doing so in fiscal year 2022 alone. The crisis shows no sign of abating, with roughly 216,000 migrants crossing the border in December 2022, an 11% increase over the November totals.
That surge was largely driven by an influx of Cuban and Nicaraguan migrants, which the Biden administration took to indicate that its parole program for Venezuelans was succeeding, given the decline of migrants from that country. Migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti would benefit from the expanded parole process.
On paper, the program aims to limit the number of uninvited arrivals at the southern border by creating a pathway for migrants to have their entry pre-approved while still in their home country.
“We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process,” Biden said when announcing the program’s expansion, according to Fox News.
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Ben Whedon is the night editor for the Just the News. He came to the company from Breitbart News and is a graduate of Washington and Lee University.
Photo “Cuban Refugees” by Andrew Smith. CC BY-SA 4.0.
