VICTORIA — And judge Federal of Texas ratified on Friday a key piece of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy that allows the entry into the United States of a limited number of immigrants from four countries for humanitarian reasons, dismissing an appeal filed by states with Republican governments who claimed that the program was a financial burden on them.
District Judge Drew B. Tipton of Victoria, Texas, ruled in favor of the humanitarian parole program, under which the United States admits up to 30,000 asylum seekers a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua y Venezuela on the whole. Eliminating the program would undermine a broader policy intended to encourage immigrants to use the Biden administration’s preferred routes to enter the United States or face harsh consequences.
Texas and 20 other states that sued argued that the program requires them to spend millions on health care, education and public safety for immigrants..
An attorney working for the Texas attorney general’s office in the court challenge said the program “created an alternative immigration system.”
Defenders of the federal government countered that immigrants admitted through this policy helped alleviate the agricultural labor shortage in the United States. It is very likely that the decision will be appealed.
Tipton was appointed by former President Donald Trump, and ruled against the Biden administration in 2022 over an order determining who to prioritize for deportation.
Source: With information from AP
