A federal judge has struck down a Biden administration policy that aimed to ease a path to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens.
The program, lauded as one of the biggest presidential actions to help immigrant families in years, allowed undocumented spouses and stepchildren of US citizens to apply for a green card, the right to permanent legal residency, without first having to leave the country.
About half a million foreign-born spouses of US citizens were estimated to have been eligible for the Biden administration’s initiative that was announced in June under the banner “Keeping Families Together”. Applications opened on 19 August.
The temporary relief from deportation brought a brief sense of security to those estimated to benefit from the program before the Texas-based US district judge Campbell Barker put it on hold just days after applicants filed their paperwork.
Immigration advocates condemned that ruling as “heartbreaking”, saying it could separate mixed-status families for years – or even permanently while their lengthy green card applications are processed.
Then on Thursday, the day after Donald Trump recaptured the White House for the Republicans, Barker ruled that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority by implementing the program and had stretched the legal interpretation of relevant immigration law “past its breaking point”.
The short-lived initiative would have been unlikely to remain in place after Trump took office in January anyway. But its early termination creates greater uncertainty for immigrant families as many are bracing for Trump’s return to the White House.
He has promised a swift and massive crackdown on undocumented people after running on promises of mass deportation and making the US-Mexico border a top election issue for voters, even many hundreds of miles away from the border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The president-elect energized his supporters on the campaign trail with a litany of anti-immigrant statements, especially about asylum seekers and thousands crossing the southern border from Mexico, Central and South America, and troubled Caribbean nations such as Haiti and Cuba, including that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the nation.
Trump and his vice-president-elect, JD Vance, repeated racist stories, particularly about Haitian immigrants living in the US legally, and whipped up anxiety among their supporters.
Fears of anti-immigration roundups, detention and deportation are now rippling through undocumented communities across the US, with the looming threat of families being torn apart and the expulsion of people who have lived law-abiding lives in the US for years, even though the logistics and costs of doing so have not been grappled with by the Trump team.
During his first term, Trump appointed Barker as a judge in Tyler, Texas, which lies in the fifth US circuit court of appeals, a favored venue for advocates pushing conservative arguments.
Barker had placed the immigration initiative on hold after Texas and 15 other states, led by their Republican attorneys general, filed a legal challenge accusing the executive branch of bypassing Congress to help immigrant families for “blatant political purposes”.
Republicans argued the initiative created costs for their states and could draw more migrants to the US.
Non-citizen spouses are already eligible for legal status but often have to apply from their home countries, which can take years.
Meanwhile, Mexico will continue pursuing measures to stop migrants from reaching its northern border with the US, its top diplomat said on Friday.
The foreign minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, stressed that Mexico’s model was working and would stay in place, pointing to data that shows the number of migrants apprehended by US authorities at the border had fallen 76% since last December, after sharp rises and then measures including a crackdown on asylum rights by Joe Biden.
“It’s working well and we’re going to continue on this path,” he told a press conference.
At the same conference Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, confirmed that she had spoken to Trump about the border in their first telephone call a day earlier while also pointing to the sharp fall in migrant crossings.
“He raised the issue of the border, and he just said it, and I told him, ‘Yes, there is the issue of the border, but there will be space to talk about it,’” said Sheinbaum, who described the conversation as “very cordial”.
Much like he did in his previous term as president, Trump has threatened to slap 25% tariffs on all Mexican exports unless its government stops migrants and drugs from crossing the shared border.
Mexico is extraordinarily reliant on the US market, which is the destination of about 80% of its exports.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting
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