Immigrant families file motion to defend Biden's 'parole in place' program as Republican states sue

A group of undocumented immigrants and their families is seeking to defend Biden's 'parole-in-place' program from a lawsuit by 16 Republican-led states.

A group of undocumented immigrants and their families is seeking to intervene in federal court to defend a new Biden administration program from a lawsuit by 16 Republican-led states. 

The program, which the White House named Keeping Families Together, offers a form of legal relief known as “parole in place” to an estimated half-million undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, allowing them to more easily apply for permanent residency and citizenship. The Republican states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to end the program.

In response, six undocumented immigrants who stand to benefit from parole in place, alongside their U.S. citizen spouses, filed a motion Monday seeking to join the government in defending the program in federal court. They are joined in their motion by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group.

“It’s just absurd to me why Texas would bring a lawsuit that would literally tear my family apart,” said Foday Turay, one of the immigrants seeking to intervene in the case. Turay was brought to the U.S. as a child from Sierra Leone, where his family escaped a civil war. He is now a lawyer working as a prosecutor for the Philadelphia district attorney. He is married to an American citizen from New Jersey, with whom he has a 1-year-old son. 

“I’ve been waiting for over a decade for a program like this,” Turay said. “Living in a country where you’ve been paying taxes for years, and yet you have to face the constant fear of being torn from your family and your community — when is that fear going to stop?” 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/parole-in-place-lawsuit-gop-undocumented-immigrants-rcna168228

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