From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Hopkins

The Biden-Harris administration suffered a major defeat in federal court on Thursday amid its fight to provide amnesty for up to half a million illegal migrants living in the United States.

President Joe Biden’s executive order that attempted to provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants married to American citizens is unlawful, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas ruled on Thursday. Biden’s order, which was first announced over the summer, was challenged by the Texas attorney general and a slate of other GOP-led states.

“Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has dedicated itself to the decimation of our immigration system and the erasure of our borders,” stated Gene Hamilton, the executive director of America First Legal, a conservative organization that led the court challenge against the order. “Time and again, the states stood up.

“And today, the great State of Texas and the courageous Ken Paxton, alongside a coalition of other brave Attorneys General, succeeded in stopping an illegal program that would have provided amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and paved the path for the largest administrative amnesty in American history,” Hamilton continued. “We are proud to stand alongside these patriots in defense of our great nation.”

Biden first unveiled the executive order in June during a White House event commemorating the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the last major amnesty program initiated by the federal government. The order — dubbed the Keeping Families Together program — allowed illegal migrant spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for lawful permanent residence without having to leave the country first, according to a fact sheet of the plan released by the administration.

Under current law, illegal immigrants can apply for legal status after they have married a U.S. citizen, but they are required to leave the country in order to move forward with the process. However, Biden’s order attempted to expand a statutory authority known as “parole-in-place”, allowing those noncitizens to wait out the application process while remaining in the country.

Illegal migrants approved for the program would not only be given lawful permanent residence and work permits, but also a pathway to citizenship, according to the plan. The White House expected the order to affect as many as half a million illegal migrants, but America First Legal placed that estimate at more than one million illegal immigrants.

America First Legal partnered with Texas and Idaho, along with a coalition of 14 state attorneys general in August to sue the Biden-Harris administration to block the amnesty order. Later that month, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas put a pause on the program, but Biden had vowed to keep fighting.

On Thursday, the court ultimately ruled that the Department of Homeland Security lacked statutory authority to carry out the order.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/CSPAN)

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Hopkins

The president-elect won roughly 45% of the Latino vote, marking a dramatic increase from the 32% Latino support he garnered in the 2020 presidential election, according to USA Today. He also won Latino men outright, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in U.S. history.

Many migrants have lost hope of illegally crossing into the United States and have decided to turn around after hearing that Republican nominee Donald Trump won the presidential election, according to multiple reports.

A migrant caravan heading for the U.S.-Mexico border has shrunk to roughly half its size as members accepted the fact that Trump would be re-taking the reins at the White House, according to a report from Reuters. An official from Mexico’s National Migration Institute told the outlet that the caravan dwindled to under 1,600 migrants, a sharp drop from its original size of 3,000 when it embarked on its northward journey on Tuesday in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula.

The official added that more than 100 individuals had asked for assistance from authorities on returning to Tapachula, but it’s not entirely clear where the rest of the caravan deserters are headed.

“I had hoped [Vice President Kamala Harris] would win, but that didn’t happen,” said Venezuelan migrant Valerie Andrade, according to Reuters.

Other migrants expressed hopelessness at Trump’s election victory, and even disdain at the historic levels of Latino support the Republican amassed in his landslide win.

“This is the end of my dream of getting out of Cuba,” said Felipe, a Cuban migrant, according to  Newsweek.

“They forgot about when they were on the other side,” Mahily Paz, another Venezuelan migrant, said about Latinos who voted for Trump, according to Newsweek. The statement erroneously suggests that most or all Latino Americans are a product of illegal immigration.

Trump emerged victorious early Wednesday morning in the U.S. presidential election, securing more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. As of Thursday, the president-elect has also remained ahead in the popular vote count, making him the first Republican candidate to win the popular vote since former President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004.

Trump, who made border enforcement a hallmark of his first presidential term, has promised a return to a hawkish immigration policy. The president-elect has vowed to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history,” a completion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and a slate of other crackdowns.

While Harris attempted to rebrand herself as more of a hawk on border security on the campaign trail, she could not shake off the perception from voters and would-be illegal migrants that she was the weaker candidate when it came to immigration enforcement.

Trump’s landslide victory on Election Day was driven in large part by growing Latino support, exit polls revealed.

The president-elect won roughly 45% of the Latino vote, marking a dramatic increase from the 32% Latino support he garnered in the 2020 presidential election, according to USA Today. He also won Latino men outright, making him the first Republican presidential candidate to do so in U.S. history.

As of Thursday afternoon, Trump had so far amassed 295 electoral votes and nearly 73 million votes from American citizens.

While many migrants expressed their dismay at the election outcome and chose to turn around, others have chosen to keep gunning for the U.S. border.

“With God’s favor, I’ll get that appointment,” a Venezuelan migrant named Jeilimar said to Reuters, speaking about her appointment to request asylum with U.S. immigration officials via the CBP One app.

Biden administration officials and other immigration workers are bracing for the possibility that Trump’s election victory will spark a rush at the border before he takes office in January, with migrants hoping to make it into the U.S. before an expected border crackdown begins.