This bill strips a narrow class of noncitizens defined by habitual residence in Palestinian-administered territories—or holders of Palestinian Authority travel documents—of a range of immigration protections. It explicitly nullifies a 2024 presidential memorandum and a DHS implementation notice on Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), forbids federal funds from being used to provide DED to that group, and rewrites multiple sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to remove eligibility for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum, refugee admission, parole, and to create new inadmissibility and deportability grounds.
For compliance officers, immigration counsel, DHS components, resettlement and legal aid organizations, and employers who sponsored or employed individuals covered by the 2024 DED action, the bill would replace case-by-case discretion with categorical bars. That shift creates immediate operational questions about identification, evidentiary standards, removals logistics, and likely litigation over statutory interpretation and constitutional or treaty-based protections.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill voids a named 2024 presidential memorandum and DHS notice on Deferred Enforced Departure and prohibits federal funds from providing DED to the specified group. It amends INA §§212, 237, 244, 207, and 208 to add a categorical ineligibility for TPS, asylum, refugee admission, parole, and to create inadmissibility and deportability based on habitual residence in Palestinian-administered territories or possession of Palestinian travel documents.
Who It Affects
DHS components (USCIS, ICE, CBP), the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), refugee resettlement agencies, legal-service providers, employers who hired affected individuals, and noncitizens who habitually resided in Judea and Samaria or Gaza or who hold Palestinian Authority passports or travel documents.
Why It Matters
The bill replaces discretionary relief with categorical exclusions for a nationality-linked grouping, shifting enforcement from individualized adjudication to status-based denial. That creates new adjudicative standards, potential burdens on removal infrastructure, and predictable legal challenges over statutory scope, definitions, and constitutional or treaty claims.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill operates on two tracks: first, it nullifies a named set of executive actions that provided Deferred Enforced Departure and related employment authorization for certain Palestinians; second, it rewrites the INA to categorically cut off multiple relief pathways for the same population. Section 2 names and invalidates a presidential memorandum and a DHS notice on DED and bars use of any appropriated funds to grant DED to an alien who habitually resided in Palestinian-administered areas or holds Palestinian travel documents.
Mechanically, that removes the specific administrative authority the executive used in 2024 for short-term, discretionary protection.
Subsequent sections amend core INA provisions. The bill inserts a new clause into the TPS statute to bar Temporary Protected Status for the defined class, adds a new inadmissibility ground and a new deportability ground to INA §§212 and 237 respectively, and changes the parole provision in INA §212(d)(5) to prohibit parole for these aliens.
It also amends the asylum statute to make the class categorically ineligible for asylum and amends the refugee admission provisions to make them ineligible for refugee status and subject to removal. Together, these edits convert what are often discretionary or individualized determinations into categorical exclusions tied solely to prior habitual residence or possession of a Palestinian travel document.The bill includes one additional operational provision: it allows rescission of lawful permanent resident status for any member of the class whose status has been adjusted and who later commits a crime of violence as defined in federal law.
That creates a statutory route to revoke adjustment-based protections. Taken together, the bill funnels cases away from individualized humanitarian adjudication and toward inadmissibility and removal proceedings, increasing the role of immigration enforcement and EOIR adjudications while limiting relief avenues that typically require case-specific factual findings.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 2 expressly voids the President’s February 14, 2024 memorandum on Deferred Enforced Departure and the DHS April 15, 2024 notice implementing employment authorization, and prohibits any appropriated funds from providing DED to aliens who habitually resided in Palestinian-administered Judea and Samaria or Gaza or who hold Palestinian Authority travel documents.
Section 3 amends INA §244(c)(2)(B) to add a categorical bar to Temporary Protected Status for aliens who habitually resided in those territories or possess Palestinian travel documents.
Section 4 adds a new inadmissibility ground to INA §212(a) and a new deportability ground to INA §237(a) tied to the same residence or document-based criteria, making affected persons both inadmissible at entry and removable if already present.
Section 5 amends the INA parole statute, preventing the Secretary of Homeland Security from granting parole to any alien meeting the bill’s territorial or document criteria; Sections 6 and 7 likewise add categorical exclusions from asylum (INA §208) and refugee admission (INA §207).
Section 7(2) authorizes rescission of adjusted lawful permanent resident status for any person from the covered group who later commits a federal crime of violence (18 U.S.C. §16(a)), creating a statutory trigger for revoking adjustment.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Nullifies specific DED actions and prohibits funding for DED
This section names the February 14, 2024 presidential memorandum and the April 15, 2024 DHS notice on DED and employment authorization and declares them to have no force or effect. It also bans use of any funds made available by any Act to provide DED to an alien who habitually resided in Palestinian-administered Judea and Samaria or Gaza, or who holds a Palestinian Authority passport or travel document. Practically, DHS loses the specific discretionary basis it used in 2024 to defer removal and authorize work for this group unless Congress later appropriates different language or the executive invokes a separate authority.
Categorical TPS ineligibility for specified Palestinians
The bill inserts a new clause into the TPS eligibility exclusions that disqualifies anyone who habitually resided in the named Palestinian-administered territories or who holds a Palestinian Authority document. That converts TPS — typically a temporary, humanitarian, country-based protection determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security — into a non-option for the defined class regardless of country conditions, removing executive discretion to designate TPS for them.
New inadmissibility and deportability grounds
This amendment adds a new ground of inadmissibility at INA §212(a)(3)(H) and a new deportability ground at INA §237(a)(4)(G) tied to habitual residence or possession of Palestinian travel documents. Those additions mean Customs and Border Protection can bar entry at the port of arrival and DHS/ICE can pursue removal for nationals or former residents who fall within the bill’s criteria. The change shifts some cases that might otherwise be resolved via humanitarian parole, asylum, or other relief into formal removal proceedings.
Parole prohibition for the covered class
The bill amends the parole provision to prevent the Secretary from paroling into the United States any alien who habitually resided in the specified territories or who holds a Palestinian Authority travel document. That narrows a tool the executive frequently uses to admit individuals temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, removing a discretionary pathway that had been used when other relief was unavailable.
Asylum ineligibility
By adding the covered class to the list of statutory bars in the asylum provision, the bill renders them categorically ineligible for asylum. Rather than requiring an adjudicator to assess individualized fear and persecution claims, the statute would mandate denial based on prior residence or documentary status alone.
Refugee admission bar and rescission of adjustment for violent crime
This section makes members of the defined group ineligible for refugee admission and orders removal. It also creates a new automatic rescission trigger: if an individual from the group obtained lawful permanent residence and later commits a crime of violence as defined in federal law, the bill directs that their adjusted status be rescinded, allowing removal proceedings based on that conviction.
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Explore Immigration in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Immigration enforcement agencies (DHS/ICE/CBP) — The bill narrows available relief pathways and creates statutory grounds for inadmissibility and deportability, giving enforcement agencies clearer legal bases to deny entry or pursue removal without engaging in discretionary relief adjudications.
- Policy actors prioritizing categorical restrictions — Congressional and executive actors seeking a rules-based, status-driven approach to immigration will find the bill's statutory bars reduce case-by-case discretion and promote uniform denials.
- Victims and advocates seeking denial of statuses to persons associated with hostile actors — Organizations or individuals arguing for stronger exclusion of persons tied to hostile territories gain a statutory mechanism that precludes many forms of relief.
Who Bears the Cost
- Noncitizens who habitually resided in Palestinian-administered territories or who hold Palestinian Authority travel documents — They would lose access to DED, TPS, asylum, refugee admission, and parole, narrowing legal remedies and increasing removal risk.
- Refugee resettlement agencies and legal aid providers — Organizations that process or represent affected individuals will face closed paths for admission and increased demand for litigation and removal defense, while fewer clients will qualify for established programs.
- DHS components and EOIR (USCIS, ICE, CBP, immigration courts) — The agencies will incur operational and litigation costs implementing categorical exclusions, verifying habitual residence and document status, and managing potentially increased removal caseloads and appeals.
- Employers and communities that integrated DED beneficiaries — Businesses that employed DED-based EAD holders and localities that received these individuals may face workforce disruption if work authorizations are nullified and beneficiaries are put into removal proceedings.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between a policy desire for categorical exclusion tied to national-security or political concerns and the legal and humanitarian obligations that flow from individualized asylum and refugee systems: favoring broad, status-based bars simplifies enforcement but risks denying protection to persons with legitimate claims, creates difficult evidentiary and logistical hurdles, and invites litigation over statutory scope and international obligations.
The bill’s operative hinge is the undefined phrase "habitually resided in the Palestinian-administered territory within Judea and Samaria or Gaza." The text supplies no definition, evidentiary standard, or temporal threshold for "habitual" residence. That omission creates a practical evidentiary problem for adjudicators: how to determine whether someone formerly present for study, family visits, or temporary work meets the exclusion.
Adjudicators will also face difficult document-verification issues when Palestinian travel documents vary in form and when individuals lack any documentary record tying them to those territories.
Legally, the bill replaces individualized humanitarian adjudication with status-based exclusion, inviting challenges on statutory interpretation, non‑refoulement obligations under international law, and potential constitutional claims (equal protection or due process) where the exclusion operates as a nationality- or place-based classification. Operationally, removing larger numbers of people raises practical constraints: transportation to territories with limited or suspended air links, cooperation from third states for travel paperwork, detention capacity while removal is pursued, and increased appeals before EOIR and federal courts.
Those implementation costs are not addressed in the bill text and will fall on DHS, DOJ, and potentially state and local systems.
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