Judge rejects Texas lawsuit against immigration policy central to Biden's border strategy

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by Republican officials in Texas that sought to shut down a federal program that has allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to fly to U.S. airports, preserving for now a policy central to the Biden administration's immigration agenda.

The dispute centered on a Biden administration program that allows up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the U.S. each month if they have American financial sponsors. Those permitted to fly to the U.S. under the policy have been granted two-year work permits under an immigration authority known as humanitarian parole that President Biden has used at an unprecedented scale.

The Biden administration has argued the policy discourages would-be migrants from those four crisis-stricken countries from journeying to the U.S.-Mexico border and entering the country illegally. The program was announced in January 2023 in conjunction with a bilateral agreement in which Mexico agreed to accept the return of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who crossed into the U.S. illegally.