Led by Texas and America First Legal (headed by Stephen Miller), the plaintiffs argue that the government’s parole power is "exceptionally limited" and meant to be used on a "case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit," a requirement they say the program does not meet. 

Before we go further, we’ll note that the U.S. has used humanitarian parole for decades to welcome groups of vulnerable migrants. The process has been around since the 1950s — far longer than even our refugee resettlement system. 

The plaintiffs also argue that the administration did not engage in the official notice-and-comment rulemaking process required by the Administrative Procedure Act — "by which a number of immigration policies have been at least temporarily struck down in recent years," Shaw notes. 

For the administration’s part, it believes the new approach is working, with the decrease in encounters with Venezuelans as evidence. "Even as overall encounters rose [in December] because of smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order, we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82% from September 2022," acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement last week.  

For more on this lawsuit, see Camilo Montoya-Galvez’s piece in CBS News. 

From our perspective, expanded parole is a good thing and within the president’s discretion. But also, the continuing pingpong of administrative actions and lawsuits is all the more reason for both parties in Congress to step in and provide long-term solutions. 

Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Dynahlee Padilla-Vasquez, Clara Villatoro and Katie Lutz. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

FIXING OUR BROKEN SYSTEM — The need for lasting solutions from Congress is also a theme in Forum Senior Fellow Linda Chavez’s latest piece in The xxxxxx. With Republicans playing politics, Democrats divided, and the president’s power limited, fixing our broken immigration system has become only more challenging, she writes. Meanwhile, following a group of bipartisan senators’ visit to the border, borderlands resident Laurie Jurs offers some solid solutions in an op-ed for the Arizona Daily Star. 

GROWTH VIA IMMIGRATION — Within two decades, U.S. population growth will be driven primarily by immigration, according to previews by the Congressional Budget Office. The projections show a population of 373 million by 2053, which is about 3 million more than the CBO had expected last year, as Alexandre Tanzi of Bloomberg reports. The CBO projects that by 2042, deaths in the current population are expected to exceed births, "meaning only immigration will expand the population." 

AFGHAN ALLIES IN KABUL — Alex Plitsas, a U.S. Army veteran, is still working on bringing Afghan evacuees to the country, reports Christopher Keating of the Hartford Courant. "We had rented or leased about 70 apartment buildings, and we were hiding and feeding almost 10,000 people across the country," said Plitsas, one of the leaders of the nonprofit Human First Coalition. Among other challenges, they have experienced transportation issues in Kabul since November, notes Keating.   

NEWCOMER ACADEMY — The Newcomer Academy in Louisville, Kentucky, continues to be "a landing pad" for some thousands of international students who have recently arrived in the country, needing a space to adjust before transitioning into their new school, reports Krista Johnson of the Louisville Courier Journal. An estimated 1,800 students who are not native English speakers have enrolled in Jefferson County Public Schools since August, which Johnson notes is the highest jump the district has had in a single year. 

Thanks for reading, 

Dan 

P.S. Lazaro Arvizu, known as "el general," has "dedicated his life to promoting Danza Azteca, a spiritual Indigenous tradition from Mexico, in Los Angeles for more than four decades." Dua Anjum has the cool story in The Los Angeles Times.