President Biden stretched the law with his “parole” program to give special breaks to illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

The ruling is another blow to Mr. Biden’s plans to try give illegal immigrants protections against a future administration’s deportation plans.

U.S. District Judge Campbell Barker said the administration took a law designed to grant leniency to unauthorized migrants who showed up at the border with exceptional cases, such as medical emergencies, and turned it into a mass-forgiveness for illegal immigrants who’d already been living here for a decade.

The program had been on hold but Judge Barker, in his new ruling, struck down the policy altogether.

Mr. Biden had announced the program this summer, saying it would cover about a half-million illegal immigrants married to U.S. citizens, and also cover about 50,000 children of the illegal immigrant spouses.

The administration justified the program by saying the illegal immigrants already have a pathway to citizenship through their marriage, but in the usual course of events they would have to return to their home country to complete that path.

Mr. Biden said his parole program would allow them to stay in the U.S. and complete the process from here without taking the risk of going home and being blocked from coming back.

Judge Barker said that might be a good policy goal, but he said the parole law written by Congress doesn’t stretch that far.

Under the law, parole is only to be granted on a case-by-case basis in exceptional circumstances, such as when someone needs an emergency medical procedure or the government wants to use the person in a criminal investigation.

Judge Barker said the law also only applies to newcomers at the border.

Mr. Biden’s program, though, applied to illegal immigrants who’d been in the country for at least a decade.

Judge Barker, who sits in eastern Texas, also said the migrants never had to prove they were facing exceptional circumstances.

“The Rule exceeds statutory authority and is not in accordance with law for this reason as well,” he wrote.

Mr. Biden has been profligate with his use of parole, using it to welcome millions of unauthorized migrants over his term.

Among his parole programs is one for Afghan evacuees; one for Ukrainians; one for Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans; and one for migrants of varying nationalities who show up in northern Mexico and pre-schedule their arrivals at the U.S. border.

Thursday’s ruling doesn’t affect those programs.