Articles Posted in Court Decisions

by

In this video, attorney Jacob Sapochnick discusses the current status of parole in place applications under the Keeping Families Together program and how a new lawsuit will impact the approval of applications under the program.

To learn more, please keep on watching this video.

What is Keeping Families Together?

The Keeping Families Together program was recently established by presidential executive order to create a pathway to permanent residency for undocumented spouses and stepchildren of U.S. Citizens, who entered the country without inspection, and have been continuously present in the United States since at least June 17, 2024.

Those granted parole in place under Keeping Families Together are given three years to apply for temporary work authorization and permanent residency from inside the United States. At least 500,000 spouses, and about 50,000 of their children are set to benefit from this program.

Parole in place simplifies the green card application process by eliminating the need for spouses to apply for an extreme hardship “waiver,” and to depart the United States to attend a visa interview at a U.S. Consulate abroad.

In doing so, this process prevents prolonged family separation and enables applicants to obtain permanent residency without departing the United States.

Federal Judge Temporarily Halts Parole in Place Program

On August 19, 2024, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting online applications for parole in place, using a new electronic form called Form I-131F, Application for Parole in Place for Certain Noncitizen Spouses and Stepchildren of U.S. Citizens.

Several days later, the state of Texas along with 15 other states filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the program.

Continue reading

by

In this video and blog post, we discuss a recent Supreme Court decision finding that U.S. Citizens do not have a fundamental right in having their noncitizen spouses admitted to the United States.

What is this ruling all about?

Department of State v. Muñoz

On June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in Department of State v. Muñoz that U.S. citizens petitioning for their foreign spouses do not have a constitutional liberty interest in their spouses being admitted to the country.

What’s worse, the court upheld the doctrine of consular nonreviewability, which says that there can be no judicial review of a consular officer’s decision finding a visa applicant inadmissible, except in a very limited class of constitutional cases.

About the Case

The plaintiff in the case, Sandra Muñoz, married her husband, a Salvadoran citizen in 2010, and shared a U.S. Citizen child with him. Thereafter, her husband applied for an immigrant visa at the U.S. Consulate in El Salvador so that they could live together in the United States and sought a waiver of inadmissibility. He denied having any gang affiliations despite being heavily tattooed.

After undergoing several interviews, the consular officer denied his application, citing §1182(a)(3)(A)(ii), a provision that renders inadmissible a noncitizen whom the officer “knows, or has reasonable ground to believe, seeks to enter the United States to engage solely, principally, or incidentally in” certain specified offenses or “any other unlawful activity.”

The plaintiff’s husband assumed that he had been denied a visa based upon the erroneous finding that he was a member of the gang MS-13. He denied being a member and requested the Consulate to reconsider its findings.

After the consulate refused, they appealed to the Department of State, which ultimately agreed with the consulate’s determination.

The couple then sought Congressional intervention and sued the State Department, claiming that they violated the plaintiff’s constitutional liberty interest in her husband’s visa application by failing to give a sufficient reason why he was inadmissible under the “unlawful activity” bar.

Continue reading