More than 16,000 American families in Ohio are “trapped in a cycle of fear and uncertainty” due to the state’s participation in a political lawsuit from corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Project 2025 allies that has blocked the Biden administration’s recent process protecting the undocumented immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens, putting hundreds of thousands of mixed status families at risk of separation.
During a Sept. 24 press event on the steps of the statehouse in Columbus, state lawmakers joined affected families and advocates to call on state Attorney General Dave Yost to stand by Ohio families and withdraw the state from the lawsuit blocking the “Keeping Families Together” process. The group carried a petition bearing more than 10,000 names “demanding relief for American mixed-status families,” American Families United said in a release received by America’s Voice.
“Family unity is the foundation of any strong community,” Heather Gonzalez, American Families United vice president and the U.S. citizen spouse of an undocumented immigrant, said at the event. “It’s what keeps us grounded, gives us purpose, and strengthens our bonds to one another. When families are torn apart, it doesn’t affect [only] them. It weakens the fabric of our society.”
“That’s what Attorney General Yost is doing by joining this lawsuit trying to separate 16,000 Ohio U.S. citizens from their immigrant spouses and tear apart 16,000 mixed-status families,” Gonzalez continued.
Last month, 16 states represented by American First Legal – a right-wing legal outfit led by former Trump officials and Project 2025 allies Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton – successfully used the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline to block Keeping Families Together applications from being processed by the federal government. To add to the cruelty, the ruling came as the very first applications were being approved.
We highlighted just a few of the thousands of American families that could be torn apart due to the Paxton-Project 2025 lawsuit. In California, Roberto Garcia said he’d just paid an attorney thousands of dollars to help his family with paperwork when he’d found out about the ruling. “It is bad that they play with people’s feelings,” he said. In Texas, Dreamer Oscar Silva hoped the Keeping Families Together process would allow him to finally permanently settle in the only country he’s ever known as home after arriving here when he was just a toddler. “I wish everyone could see that my wife and I are just like every other married couple you know,” he said.
“Nationwide, an estimated 1.1 million U.S. citizens are married to long-term undocumented individuals,” American Families United said. “In Ohio, Two percent U.S. citizens live with at least one undocumented person and two percent U.S.-citizen children live with at least one undocumented person.”
On Oct. 10, both the #KeepingFamiliesTogether intervention appeal + the 2nd appeal in Texas’s suit to end DACA will be argued in the same courtroom + likely before the same panel of judges. See this litigation tracker newsletter for the latest🗞️: https://t.co/6LDZEJJ0rF
— Justice Action Center (JAC) (@jactioncenter) September 30, 2024
The Paxton-Project 2025 lawsuit is set to have its next major hearing at the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Oct. 10. In a stark example of this relentless effort to tear apart American families and deport long-settled immigrants, Texas’ latest attempt to end the popular and successful DACA program will be heard on this same day, in the same courtroom and presumably before the same panel of judges, Justice Action Center said.
“On appeal is the district court’s decision holding that the Biden Administration’s codification of DACA into a regulation did nothing to alter his prior conclusion that the program is unlawful,” Justice Action Center said in an email. “For now, the status quo remains the same for the program: those currently with DACA can continue to renew for the time being. Following oral argument, a decision from the Fifth Circuit could come at any time—though it also could take months.”
Texas’ lawsuit has blocked Texans like Sam from applying for a work permit and protection from deportation, after being previously blocked under the Trump administration’s unsuccessful attempt to end DACA in 2017.
“Sam said that not being allowed to file was heartbreaking,” The Nation reported in April. “I remember being very upset and emotional,” she said. “I was 14 and in high school, and I just thought, ‘My one chance of living a normal life, completely shot in front of me.” Nearly 580,000 immigrants, including nearly 3,300 in Ohio, are currently protected by DACA, and they contribute more than $2 billion to Social Security and Medicare alone every single year.
Ohio has also been dominating national headlines for weeks now due to Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance’s continuous amplification of vicious lies that have endangered all of Springfield’s residents. Jamie McGregor, a local businessman and lifelong Republican, has been facing threats from neo-Nazis after speaking out in defense of his Haitian employees. Many of these workers have helped revitalize Springfield in recent years. Yet Yost’s pushback to the Trump campaign’s lies has been contradictory when not diversionary, unlike Gov. Mike DeWine, who to his credit published an op-ed in The New York Times condemning the language disparaging constituents. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there,” he wrote.
Jacob Payen, a U.S. military veteran, Springfield entrepreneur, and representative from the Haitian American Alliance, was also at the American Families United event to advocate for American families at risk of separation due to the Paxton-Project 2025 lawsuit. “This lawsuit is not helping us,” he said in a report from The Statehouse News Bureau. “This is destroying what we look up to as the American dream. With this lawsuit, we can no longer chase that dream as immigrants.”
RELATED: Ken Paxton And Project 2025 Allies Will Stop at Nothing to Separate Legally Married Couples
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