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, according to CBS News. 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 to CBS News. The agency further noted that the refunds were “in the public interest and consistent with applicable law.”
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.
