The Biden administration lost its marbles long ago. But their latest antics are downright nuts.
And now lawyers all over the country are preparing to hit President Biden with a barrage of lawsuits for this executive overreach.
President Joe Biden announced a significant executive order on Tuesday, potentially granting amnesty to over 500,000 undocumented immigrants in the United States. However, this move is likely to face significant legal hurdles.
Biden’s announcement coincided with the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. His executive order aims to offer deportation protection, work permits, and a path to legal status for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. To qualify, individuals must have lived in the U.S. for at least ten years, be married to a U.S. citizen, and receive approval from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Those approved will have three years to apply for permanent residency, during which they can stay in the U.S. and work legally. However, similar to DACA, this action is expected to face challenges from conservative groups and immigration hardliners who argue that it is unconstitutional and misinterprets the law.
Legal Challenges on the Horizon
An attorney from the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) revealed that they are exploring legal challenges, while America First Legal, a conservative organization led by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, pledged to take legal action against the order. Matt O’Brien, IRLI’s director of investigations and a former immigration judge, criticized the move as an abuse of the parole authority. “This is nothing but an attempt to create an amnesty by abuse of the parole authority,” O’Brien stated.
The Biden administration plans to use “parole-in-place” to facilitate this amnesty. This authority will allow undocumented spouses to apply for green cards without leaving the country, bypassing current legal requirements that necessitate departing the U.S. to process their applications. Critics argue that this expansion of parole-in-place is unconstitutional and oversteps executive authority.
Discretionary Parole and Executive Overreach
Under existing immigration law, the executive branch can grant parole on a case-by-case basis. However, experts contend that the Biden administration’s broad use of this power for mass parole is a misapplication. Joey Chester, from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, stated that parole should be narrow and temporary, criticizing the order as a political move that violates immigration laws. “Parole is intended to be very narrow, allowing inadmissible aliens to enter on a temporary and case-by-case basis only,” Chester emphasized.
Critics like James Massa, CEO of NumbersUSA, argue that this order incentivizes illegal immigration and overextends presidential authority. Massa condemned the action as both unconstitutional and ill-timed. “Rather than stopping the worst border crisis in history, President Biden has overreached his executive authority to use an unconstitutional process, circumventing voters and their elected representatives in Congress, to send a message that amnesty is available to those who enter illegally into the United States,” Massa asserted.
The concept of parole-in-place originated during the Reagan administration when Congress amended the Immigration and Nationality Acts (INA) to permit legally paroled noncitizens to apply for green cards. However, during the Clinton administration, authorities determined that parole could also apply to undocumented immigrants.
O’Brien emphasized that parole-in-place lacks a statutory basis, arguing that the INA requires lawful entry and status maintenance for green card eligibility. “Neither advance parole (allowing aliens with no status to re-enter the US after travel) nor parole-in-place have any basis in statute,” O’Brien stated.
Expanding Protections and Visa Expeditions
Biden’s order, dubbed “Keeping Families Together,” represents the most extensive amnesty measure since President Obama’s DACA policy in 2012, which protected young undocumented immigrants from deportation. In addition, Biden announced plans to expedite work visas for DACA recipients and other “Dreamers” who have U.S. degrees and job offers in their fields.
This broad amnesty proposal follows Biden’s recent executive order intended to curb illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, which suspends noncitizen entries when border encounters exceed 2,500 daily over a week. This measure, however, has faced criticism from both immigration advocates and opponents.
Biden’s Re-Election and Immigration Record
As Biden prepares for a tight re-election race against former President Donald Trump, his handling of immigration remains a contentious issue. With over 7 million illegal crossings reported during his tenure, Biden’s administration has reversed numerous Trump-era immigration policies, such as halting border wall construction, ending the Remain in Mexico program, and rescinding the Title 42 health order.
In his first year, Biden issued 296 executive actions on immigration, with 89 specifically targeting the rollback of Trump’s policies, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
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