A federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from fast-tracking the deportation of people detained far from the southern border, in a blow to Trump’s mass deportation scheme.
U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb ruled Friday that the administration’s attempts to speed up the deportation process create a “significant risk” that could wrongly affect immigrants with legal permission to remain in the U.S.
Cobb, a Biden appointee, granted a request from Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group, to pause two policies introduced by Trump in January that made millions more immigrants eligible for deportation under expedited removal.
Historically, expedited removals were primarily used in cases of people arrested within 100 miles of the southern border and within a 14-day period. The policies introduced by Trump in the first week of his second term sought to expand such removals nationwide. Trump had previously expanded expedited removals around the U.S., but the policy was rolled back by President Joe Biden.
Cobb ruled that Make the Road New York had made a convincing argument that the expanded application of the expedited removal process violated immigrants’ due process rights.
Cobb notes that she is not questioning whether expanding expedited removals is constitutional, just ruling that the government needs to ensure it affords potential deportees due process.
“[The court] merely holds that in applying the statute to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who have not previously been subject to expedited removal, the Government must afford them due process. The procedures currently in place fall short,” Cobb wrote.
“When it comes to people living in the interior of the country, prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” she continued.
Cobb added that those affected “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment.”
Cobb blocked the expedited removal of immigrants with parole status earlier this month, arguing that doing so was essentially changing the game for people previously authorized to remain.
The immigrant population in the U.S. dropped by 1.4 million between January and July, according to the Pew Research Center—a combination of forced removals and people leaving in fear.
Deportations are at their highest level in a decade, with around 200,000 people having been deported since Trump took office.
