The Biden-Harris administration will issue millions of dollars in refunds to illegal migrants who applied for an amnesty program that was struck down in court.
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) intends to refund the $580 application fee to the roughly 94,000 individuals who paid in hopes of benefiting from the administration’s Keeping Families Together program, the agency confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday. The program, had it not been deemed unlawful, offered a pathway to citizenship for potentially hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants living in the U.S. who are married to American citizens.
“The court order vacating the [Keeping Families Together] process has resulted in requestors paying a fee for an immigration benefit request that, through no fault of their own, cannot be considered,” USCIS said in a statement provided to the DCNF. The agency further noted that the refunds were “in the public interest and consistent with applicable law.”
CBS News first reported on the agency’s intention to refund applicants.
President Joe Biden first announced the executive order in June 2024 during a White House event commemorating the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals, the last major amnesty program initiated by the federal government. The order — dubbed the Keeping Families Together program — permitted illegal migrant spouses of American 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 married an American citizen, but they are required to leave the U.S. in order to move forward with the process. Under Biden’s order, a statutory authority known as “parole-in-place” was expanded, allowing those noncitizens to wait out the application process while remaining in the U.S.
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 White House plan. The administration expected the order to affect around half a million illegal migrants, while other estimates put that figure at more than one million individuals.
Opposition to the order was swift. 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, resulting in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas putting a pause on the program later that month.
Plaintiffs argued that the Department of Homeland Security exceeded its statutory authority in attempting to provide amnesty en masse to illegal migrants already living in the country, according to court documents. The Immigration and Nationality Act only allows for paroling migrants into the U.S., not for granting parole in place for those already in the country, plaintiffs argued.
While Biden had initially vowed to keep fighting to protect the amnesty program, the District Court of the Eastern District of Texas in November ultimately found the order unlawful. With President-elect Donald Trump just days away from returning to power, the outgoing administration’s plans to offer refunds appears to be a white flag of surrender for the mass amnesty attempt.
Refunds to applicants amount to around $55 million, USCIS confirmed.
“The Biden Administration’s actions over the past four years are indicative of the contempt it holds for hard-working, tax paying Americans,” America First Legal senior advisor Ian Prior said to the DCNF on Wednesday. “From the repeated failed attempts to force Americans to pay for student loan forgiveness to using their money to reimburse applicants to an illegal amnesty program, this administration’s legacy will be one of lawlessness and wastefulness.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from USCIS.
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