A group of couples with mixed immigration statuses are asking the Supreme Court to undo a lower court order that blocks the Keeping Families Together program — which offers a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented spouses.
Texas and other states sued to stop the program days after it began in August, and it's been on hold ever since. Almost a dozen people are listed on a filing to the Supreme Court asking it to lift that hold and allow the federal government to resume processing applications for the program, arguing the bar has gone on past its legal limit.
It’s open to undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record, have been in the U.S. for at least a decade and are married to U.S. citizens — like Abigail Montes and her husband. She was born and raised in Phoenix and he’s from Mexico. They were married in 2018 and they’ve been working to get him US residency almost ever since.
“Since we’ve gotten married, we have budgeted quite a bit of money to get this process started, so it’s kind of a waiting game of, we’ve collected what we had to collect, now you’re just going to sit and wait,” she said.
Marrying a U.S. citizen does not automatically provide a pathway to citizenship. Spouses are required to return to their country and set up an appointment at a U.S. embassy or consulate to apply for a visa. But under U.S. law, people who are in the U.S. without permission for more than a year can be banned from re-entry for years if they leave.
Montes and her husband are currently waiting on a waiver that will allow him to go through the process and avoid that ban. But she doesn’t know how long they’ll have to wait.
“I know a lot of the talk and stuff like that is, ‘Oh, they come here, they get this, they get that,’ and they’re incorrect,” she said. “I obviously want to grow old with my husband, I don’t want to have that fear of taking the chance of him maybe getting deported, it’s someone I want to spend my life with, that’s why we started this whole process.”
Montes says they are eligible for the Keeping Families Together program, but logistical issued have so far kept them from applying. All applications have been on hold since August, but the case has yet to actually go before a judge — it's first day in court in Election Day in Texas.
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