(The Center Square) – As Illinois grapples with the influx of non-citizen migrants, a Texas federal judge has blocked the Biden administration’s latest immigration policy.
President Joe Biden announced in June a policy that allowed undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens to apply for green cards without leaving the country. The White House estimated that 500,000 people were eligible for the program.
Illinois U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, recently attended an American Business Immigration Coalition Action event in Chicago to discuss the policy.
“Let’s work together until Biden’s closing days and make this a stronger nation for the immigrants that are here and make a difference in our future,” said Durbin.
Sixteen Republican-led states, including Missouri and Iowa, argued in a court filing that the program was harmful to them, would encourage more unauthorized migration, and “directly violates the laws created by Congress.”
One of the states leading the challenge is Texas, which in the lawsuit said the state has had to pay tens of millions of dollars annually from health care to law enforcement because of immigrants living in the state without legal status.
U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker wrote in his ruling that the states’ claims “are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court has been able to afford to date.”
Since August 2022, Illinois has received more than 40,000 migrants bused up from southern U.S. border communities impacted by border crossers. Illinois taxpayers have paid more than a billion dollars for non-citizen health care, housing, food and education in the past two years with hundreds of millions of dollars more expected.
Not all of the arriving migrants want to stay in Illinois, so it is costing taxpayers more money to relocate them. According to the Illinois Department of Human Services, migrant travel costs in the Chicago area, including people leaving by bus, plane and train, total nearly $800,000.
Barker’s order lasts for two weeks but could be extended.