20 States Rally in Suit Against Biden’s Immigrant ‘Parole’ Program

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection patch on the arm of an agent in the Jacumba mountains in Imperial County, Calif., on Oct. 6, 2022. Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Feb. 14 led a coalition of 20 states in partnership with America First Legal (AFL) in a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. The states seek an injunction against a new program that would allow hundreds of thousands more immigrants to be “paroled” into the United States each year.

The program allows migrants to obtain advance approval to enter the United States while still in their home country, despite there not being a previous legal basis for them to do so.

The states’ motion for preliminary injunction requests that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas immediately halt this “parole” plan until the lawsuit is resolved.

ALF announced the lawsuit on Jan. 24 of this year, saying Biden administration officials created “a new blatantly unlawful program that will permit up to 360,000 aliens to be ‘paroled’ into the United States every year—despite no authorization from Congress to do so.”

AFL President Stephen Miller said in a statement about the injunction that “Biden’s plan to mass import unauthorized aliens from their home countries directly to the United States without any legal basis for doing so is nothing more than a brazen attempt to accelerate stratospheric migration levels while, at the same time, concealing the sheer volume of cross border flows by transporting these illicit aliens directly from their home countries to the American interior.”

The program could permit up to 360,000 migrants to fly into the United States from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela each year if they meet certain requirements, including not entering the country illegally, passing background checks, and having a sponsor in the United States.

The program, which was introduced in October 2022 for Venezuelans and expanded in January, also allows migrants to get work permits and a two-year license to live in the United States, and it’s combined with an extension of Title 42 expulsions to cover those nationalities.

The states filed a lawsuit, claiming that the program is illegal due to congressional parole rules, which limit its use to a “case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”

Joining the suit along with Texas were attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.