A US federal judge upheld on Friday the Biden administration’s program to grant temporary legal immigration status to up to 30,000 asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

This initiative, also known as humanitarian parole, provides an avenue for people from these nations to avoid illegal entry into the US. It has been a key component of the administration’s efforts to manage the flow of migrants arriving at the US southern border. This lawsuit was the first to challenge the president’s immigration parole authority in federal court. This program enables individuals from specified countries to secure a two-year parole period, granting temporary permission to reside and work in the US, contingent upon having a financial sponsor to assist them.

Texas and 20 other states sued the Biden administration last year, arguing that the program is forcing them to spend millions on health care, education and public safety for the migrants. The states also contended that the Biden administration failed to follow a notice and comment rulemaking procedure before implementing the rule and asserted that the policy exceeds the administration’s jurisdiction. Texas additionally asserted that the program would impose “significant financial costs” on the state since it would need to provide “driver’s licenses, healthcare, education, as well as enforcement and correctional services.”

However, Judge Drew B. Tipton from the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas held that the states had not proven they had legal standing to assert any of their arguments, writing:

The record establishes that the number of CHNV [Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan] nationals entering the United States since the program’s implementation has dramatically decreased by as much as 44 percent. Plaintiffs, therefore, are unable to demonstrate that they have been injured by the Program, and as a result, they lack standing to bring these claims.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas praised the court’s ruling, saying the program “is a key element of our efforts to address the unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere, and other countries around the world see it as a model to tackle the challenge of increased irregular migration that they too are experiencing.”

Parole authority has been used by the US to handle migratory influx before. Parole authority facilitated the admission of Hungarian refugees after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against the Soviet Union, the entry of Cuban refugees after the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s and Chinese refugees who fled from communist China to Hong Kong in the 1960s. Most recently, in April 2022, the Biden administration introduced a humanitarian parole program for Ukrainians.