US court halts Trump's sweeping expansion of fast-track deportations

A US federal judge on Friday (local time) temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s bid to expand fast-track deportations of undocumented migrants detained inside the country without a court hearing, dealing a setback to its mass removal agenda.

Judge Jia M Cobb of the District of Columbia said the administration’s January decision to widen the use of “expedited removal” beyond the border did not give detainees enough due process. The process had previously applied only to migrants caught near the US-Mexico border.

“In defending this skimpy process, the Government makes a truly startling argument: that those who entered the country illegally are entitled to no process under the Fifth Amendment,” Cobb wrote in her 48-page opinion. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk.”

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The American Civil Liberties Union had sued on behalf of immigrant rights group Make the Road New York, after the Department of Homeland Security announced it would extend expedited removal to migrants living in the US for two years or less.

Cobb, a Biden appointee, clarified she was not challenging the statute’s constitutionality at the border, but said applying it nationwide carried “a significant risk of erroneous removal” since many undocumented migrants have lived in the US for more than two years.

She allowed the policy to remain in place for migrants stopped within 100 miles of the border who had been in the country less than 14 days, but said expanding it further created “an intolerable risk” of wrongful deportation.

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