Washington, DC — Yesterday, a federal judge in Texas issued an administrative stay to pause the newly launched, “Keeping Families Together” program – the Biden Administration policy that offers legal protections, known as “parole in place” – to select long-settled spouses of U.S. citizens as they seek permanent status and citizenship in the United States. The ruling, from Judge J. Campbell Barker in the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, followed the lawsuit filed by Stephen Miller’s America First Legal and its lead attorney Gene Hamilton, co-author of Project 2025, and includes Texas and 15 other states.
The developments are a prime example of what America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold has called “the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline” (learn more here) and underscore the timeliness of a New York Times story on the 5th circuit, “How a Federal Court in New Orleans Is Driving the Conservative Agenda.”
Yet beyond the legal implications and analysis are the larger stakes and takeaways. The “Keeping Families Together” program, which relies on existing statute passed by Congress, is designed to keep American families together and ensure that spouses of U.S. citizens who have lived here for 10 years can be safe from deportation while they pursue citizenship. It’s the type of common sense public policy that should be a cross-ideological point of consensus.
Yet the opponents of the new program include the main architects of the federal government’s disgraceful family separation policy, Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton, who is also one of the lead authors of Project 2025 and its details for implementing a mass family separation and deportation program. These operatives opposed to immigration are working with the states’ attorneys general and are adamant that these spouses are denied protections and opportunities to become citizens – keeping them in danger of deportation and future family separation.
The following is a statement from David Leopold, legal advisor to America’s Voice and Immigration Group Leader at UB Greensfelder LLP:
“While it’s not surprising to again see the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline in action, that shouldn’t overshadow how extreme the ruling and the larger transparent strategy on display remains. This new program to keep families together is based on existing law and is a step forward toward real policy solutions in the absence of federal reform.
Unfortunately, the cadre of states and anti-immigrant activists such as Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton want to attack immigration policy solutions and block broader reforms at all costs. Miller and Hamilton want to make sure that the spouses of U.S. citizens who have resided in the U.S. for ten years are eligible for mass deportation under the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 next year. Every lawmaker and every leader opposed to mass deportation ought to be talking about this.”
In the states’ lawsuit, Miller and Hamilton asserted that the impact of the newly launched program on states’ budget proved the standing of the 16 states. During November 2022 oral arguments in United States v. Texas, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan observed of that common argument that Texas relies on in repeated attempts to control federal immigration policy by selecting friendly judges in Texas:
“You can pick your trial court judge … One judge stops a federal immigration policy in its tracks because you have a kind of, sort of speculative argument that your budget is going to be affected. I mean, we’re just going to be in a –in a situation where every administration is confronted by suits by states that can … bring a policy to a dead halt, to a dead stop, by just showing a dollar’s worth of costs?”
According to Vanessa Cardenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Once again, the Texas tail is wagging the American dog and anti-immigration officials who are attacking immigrants and immigration on all levels in the state are exerting an almost veto-like power over sensible policies at the federal level. The federal government is tasked by our Constitution to set federal policy on immigration and citizenship, but the current configuration of the courts and the way that some bad actors are willing to exploit venue shopping makes that almost impossible.”
