The Biden-Harris administration suffered a major defeat in federal court on Thursday amid its fight to provide amnesty for up to half a million illegal migrants living in the United States.

President Joe Biden’s executive order that attempted to provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants married to American citizens is unlawful, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas ruled on Thursday. Biden’s order, which was first announced over the summer, was challenged by the Texas attorney general and a slate of other GOP-led states.

“Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has dedicated itself to the decimation of our immigration system and the erasure of our borders,” stated Gene Hamilton, the executive director of America First Legal, a conservative organization that led the court challenge against the order. “Time and again, the states stood up.

“And today, the great State of Texas and the courageous Ken Paxton, alongside a coalition of other brave Attorneys General, succeeded in stopping an illegal program that would have provided amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and paved the path for the largest administrative amnesty in American history,” Hamilton continued. “We are proud to stand alongside these patriots in defense of our great nation.”

Biden first unveiled the executive order in June during a White House event commemorating the 12-year anniversary of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the last major amnesty program initiated by the federal government. The order — dubbed the Keeping Families Together program — allowed illegal migrant spouses of U.S. 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 have married a U.S. citizen, but they are required to leave the country in order to move forward with the process. However, Biden’s order attempted to expand a statutory authority known as “parole-in-place”, allowing those noncitizens to wait out the application process while remaining in the country.

Illegal migrants approved for the program would not only be given lawful permanent residence and work permits, but also a pathway to citizenship, according to the plan. The White House expected the order to affect as many as half a million illegal migrants, but America First Legal placed that estimate at more than one million illegal immigrants.

America First Legal partnered with Texas and Idaho, along with a coalition of 14 state attorneys general in August to sue the Biden-Harris administration to block the amnesty order. Later that month, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas put a pause on the program, but Biden had vowed to keep fighting.

On Thursday, the court ultimately ruled that the Department of Homeland Security lacked statutory authority to carry out the order.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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