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AUSTIN – Opponents are suing to end a federal program that could potentially give nearly half a million immigrants without legal status who are married to U.S. citizens a path to citizenship.

Sixteen Republican-led states filed suit Friday to halt the program launched by President Joe Biden in June, saying in court filings that the Biden administration bypassed Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for “blatant political purposes.”

Under the policy, which started taking applications Monday, many spouses without legal status can apply for something called “parole in place,” offering permission to stay in the U.S., apply for a green card and eventually get on a path to citizenship.

But the program has been particularly contentious in an election year where immigration is one of the biggest issues, with many Republicans attacking the policy and contending it is essentially a form of amnesty for people who broke the law.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Friday that the plan “violates the Constitution and actively worsens the illegal immigration disaster that is hurting Texas and our country.”

The suit filed against the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other Biden administration officials accuses the agency of attempting to parole spouses “en masse,” which the states contend is an abuse of power.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The bipartisan immigration and criminal justice organization FWD.us noted the timing of the lawsuit, which was filed on the night Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president, and said the program is in compliance with the law,

“The only motivation behind this lawsuit is the cruelty of tearing families apart and the crass politics of hoping a judge might do the bidding of the anti-immigrant movement,” the organization said in a statement.

To be eligible for the program, immigrants must have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years, not pose a security threat or have a disqualifying criminal history, and have been married to a citizen by June 17 — the day before the program was announced.

They must pay a $580 fee to apply and fill out a lengthy application, including an explanation of why they deserve humanitarian parole and a long list of supporting documents proving how long they have been in the country.

They apply to the Department of Homeland Security, and if approved, have three years to seek permanent residency. During that period, they can get work authorization. The administration estimates about 500,000 people could be eligible, plus about 50,000 of their children.

Before this program, it was complicated for people who were in the U.S. illegally to get a green card after marrying an American citizen. They can be required to return to their home country — often for years — and they always face the risk they may not be allowed back in.

FORT WORTH – The Fort worth Star-Telegram says recent stories of noncitizens registering to vote in the upcoming general election might have led some to believe the activity is rampant in North Texas. But the number of voter registration applications rejected in Tarrant County because the person is not a U.S. citizen tells a different story. So far this year, Tarrant County has received and processed around 53,000 voter registrations, according to county spokesperson Bill Hanna. Of those, 18 have been rejected for not providing proof of citizenship, he said. That number represents 0.0003% of this year’s voter registration applications in Tarrant County. The idea that noncitizens were registering to vote en masse in North Texas flared up earlier this week after Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo posted on X Sunday that there was a “massive line of immigrants” registering to vote outside a driver license office in Weatherford.

“None of it is true,” a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which operates the office, told the Star-Telegram on Monday, adding that the idea that a line of nonwhite people waiting to get their IDs were unauthorized immigrants was “kind of racist.” Brady Gray, chair of the Republican party in Parker County, looked into Bartiromo’s story on Monday and found that “there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim.” He told the Star-Telegram on Wednesday, however, that his findings should not be taken as representative of Texas counties writ large. Bartiromo doubled down on her friend’s wife’s account Thursday on her morning show on Fox, citing other parts of the DPS spokesperson’s statement to the Star-Telegram: that there was a voter registration booth outside a Lake Worth DPS office on Friday, but not at the other two sites mentioned. “I’m told speaker Mike Johnson will move to attach the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote, to a continuing resolution to fund government when Congress returns in September,” she said.

TEXAS – The Houston Chronicle reports that Gov. Greg Abbott regularly credits his $11 billion border security crackdown with driving down border crossings in Texas. But a new analysis of federal data shows three of the four southwestern border states have seen crossings decline significantly this year, and Texas had the most crossings of any state in July. “Illegal crossings into Texas are DOWN 85% thanks to Operation Lone Star,” Abbott wrote on the social media site X earlier this month. In another post last week, the Republican governor wrote that hundreds of miles of razor wire the Texas National Guard has strung along the border has “helped to decrease illegal immigration by about 85%.” Crossings have dropped 86% in Texas since December, when the Border Patrol logged record apprehensions.

But they have also fallen 84% in Arizona and 55% in California, two states with Democratic governors and no comparable border initiatives, according to an analysis of federal data by Adam Isacson, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group. “Texas’s big border crackdown hasn’t deterred migration any more than other border states,” Isacson wrote on X on Tuesday. Abbott’s office said the governor launched Operation Lone Star to “fill in the dangerous gaps” left by the Biden administration, and that since its launch in 2021, crossings have similarly declined 85%. “Until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to the Biden-Harris border crisis,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. The state-level analysis is the latest evidence that a major slowdown at the southern border this year has little to do with the state’s ongoing crackdown. The biggest declines came in January, after Mexico stepped up enforcement under pressure from the Biden administration, and in June, after President Joe Biden issued an executive order that shut off asylum processing when more than 2,500 migrants illegally cross into the U.S. in a single day. Border-wide crossings fell from 249,740 in December to 124,216 in January, according to the analysis. In May, the Border Patrol logged 117,905 apprehensions in the four border states. By July, they tallied just 56,408. Texas had the largest share of those, with 16,991, just ahead of California’s 16,471.