MINNEAPOLIS — A federal court in Texas has paused a program for immigrant spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens who entered the country illegally.
The Keeping Families Together program started just a couple of weeks ago, on Aug. 19, after the Biden Administration announced it in June.
At Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, attorneys were quick to share the news on social media.
"We're super excited to tell you about a new program for immigrant spouses of U.S. Citizens," Danielle Hendrickson, managing attorney for Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid's Immigration Law Project said in an Instagram reel. "It starts on Aug. 19 and will be a pathway for citizenship."
In a KARE interview, Hendrickson explained that the program allows spouses of citizens to apply for a document, or status, called "parole in place."
"When someone hasn't entered the United States lawfully with a visa or some type of status, then they have to do what's called consular processing, so they have to go abroad and go through an interview in an embassy to go on to that next step," she said. "If they leave the United States to go through that process, they are then subject to 10 years of waiting outside of the United States before they can come back to the US."
"So what Keeping Families Together is, it allows people to apply in the United States," Hendrickson said. "They can move on to that next step of applying for permanent residence all within the United States without having to have that period of separation from their family."
More than a dozen states challenged the program, saying it should have gone through Congress instead of the president. So just 10 days into the launch, a federal judge in Texas put the program on pause. The hold is set to last two weeks, and DHS will still accept applications - just not approve them.
But Hendrickson and her clients worry applications submitted before the pause will not be approved, and that the pause may not be temporary. The nonprofit published a response Tuesday.
"Drawing similarities to DACA, we saw this same sort of trajectory happen," she said. "We are uncertain about what's going to happen when those 14 days end next week. That could continue and likely will continue."
She says the hold could possibly last past the presidential election.
"For folks who have already had to live for a very long time with that uncertainty, having that risk or that possibility of being torn away from their families, and to have that hope that there was finding a path to move forward and then to have the rug pulled out from you, basically overnight, it's really tragic," she said.
The Texas Attorney General and 15 other state attorneys general who sued argue the program incentivizes illegal immigration. Minnesota was not one of the complainants.