Experts: Challenge to Biden's "Keeping Families Together" (Parole in Place) Program May Fail on Standing

Andrew Kreighbaum, Bloomberg, Aug. 23, 2024

"About half a million immigrants married to American citizens are expected to qualify for the program—dubbed Keeping Families Together by the Biden administration—launched Aug. 19, along with another 50,000 immigrant stepchildren. ... The states bringing the lawsuit argued that they would suffer “considerable financial injuries on education, health care, and law-enforcement costs that they would not otherwise incur but for the PIP Program.” ... Those standing arguments and claims that the program exceeds agency authority echo challenges to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School. Yale-Loehr co-authored a letter to the Biden administration in May arguing that legal authority was clear to grant parole for spouses of citizens, in part because a parole grants would be temporary in duration, provide a significant public benefit, and be made on a case-by-case basis. In a notice of implementation for the program, the DHS also found that the program could potentially increase tax revenue at the local, state, and federal levels by increasing compliance with the tax code for immigrants employed informally and by adding workers to tight labor markets. A district court in March dismissed a similar GOP challenge to a Biden administration parole program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, finding that they couldn’t establish standing. ... Immigration attorney Charles Kuck predicted the challenge to the parole program would ultimately fail but said it exposed “what kind of people” were bringing the lawsuit. “The logic of the challenge, that single parent households and separating families is better for a state than keeping families together, is something that can only come out of the mind of a true nativist and hater of immigrants,” he said."