US District Court judge Drew Tipton in Victoria, Texas, said the 21 states, led by Texas, lacked standing to pursue the 2023 lawsuit because they could not show that the programme, which allows up to 30,000 people per month to enter the US, caused them any injury.
Some 234,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans had entered the US through the programme as of November 2023, according to US department of homeland security (DHS) statistics. To qualify, migrants must have a US sponsor and enter the country by air.
Tipton in his ruling noted that the number of people illegally entering the US from the four countries since the programme was implemented had dramatically decreased by as much as 44%. The judge did not address the merits of the lawsuit, which claims that DHS lacked the authority to adopt the programme.
The US department of justice and the office of Republican Texas attorney-general Ken Paxton both did not respond to requests for comment.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in the Nov 5 presidential election, has sought to expand legal pathways to the US to discourage would-be migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.
Republicans, including the party’s candidate to face off against Biden, former president Donald Trump, have said the “parole” programmes go beyond the scope of what is allowable by law.
Record numbers of migrants have been caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally during Biden’s presidency. Republicans say Biden should have kept Trump’s more restrictive policies while Biden has argued that Republicans have refused to provide adequate border funding and pass legislation that would toughen enforcement.
The states argued in their lawsuit that the US government’s authority to use parole is “exceptionally limited” and can only be applied on a case-by-case basis. They claimed they faced irreparable harm because arriving migrants increase the cost of public services, including policing and emergency medical care.
Tipton, a Trump appointee, said in his ruling that the programme was having the opposite effect.
“The court has before it a case in which Plaintiffs claim that they have been injured by a program that has actually lowered their out-of-pocket costs,” he wrote.
In a separate case on Friday, Tipton ordered the Biden administration to halt its efforts to redirect US$1.4 billon in Trump-era border wall construction funds to other projects.
Tipton sided with Texas and Missouri in the case, but paused the ruling for a week to allow for an appeal.