A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from swiftly deporting illegal migrants from the interior of the US.
Washington, DC-based District Judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, argued that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people.”
The Trump administration had sought to expand the scope of the expedited removal process – typically used to fast-track deportations for migrants apprehended within 14 days of entering the country and caught within 100 miles of a US land border – to use on migrants “anywhere in the United States” and in the county illegally for “less than two years.”
“The Court does not cast doubt on the constitutionality of the expedited removal statute, nor on its longstanding application at the border,” Cobb wrote in her 48-page opinion.
“It 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,” she added.
Expanding expedited removals, which allows migrants to be deported without a court hearing, was widely viewed as a key tool for President Trump to carry out his mass deportation operation.
Trump sought to expand expedited removals late in his first term but was blocked by a federal judge.
The policy change was eventually allowed to go into effect in October 2020, and was used to deport 17 foreign nationals before the Biden administration took over and ended the practice, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Cobb argued that illegal migrants impacted by the Trump administration’s attempt to expand expedited removals “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment.”
“When it exponentially expanded the population subject to expedited removal, the Government did not, however, in any way adapt its procedures to this new group of people,” she wrote. “But 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.”
Cobb is the same judge who will rule on a lawsuit filed against Trump by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, whom the president is attempting to fire over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud.
“This activist judge’s ruling ignores the President’s clear authorities under both Article II of the Constitution and the plain language of federal law,” a Department of Homeland Security official told The Post.
“The previous administration facilitated an invasion of our country at the southern border,” the official continued. “DHS is exercising its full authority under federal law by placing illegal aliens who have been here for less than two years into expedited removal.”
“President Trump has a mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst. We have the law, facts, and common sense on our side.”
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