A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from rapidly deporting migrants who entered the U.S. legally on humanitarian grounds, potentially curtailing arrests at immigration courts that have triggered controversy across the country.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of Washington, D.C., barred federal immigration officials from using two Trump administration directives to apply a fast-track deportation process known as expedited removal on migrants who were granted immigration parole to enter the U.S. at an official port of entry. Parole is an immigration authority that allows federal officials to admit foreigners on humanitarian grounds, and lets them live and work in the U.S. legally on a temporary basis.
If left in place, Cobb’s ruling could significantly hinder the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to ramp up its mass deportation campaign by targeting migrants allowed into the U.S. under the Biden administration through the parole authority. The Justice Department is expected to appeal her order.
One operation in particular that could be curtailed by Cobb’s ruling is a Trump administration effort to convince immigration judges to dismiss the court cases of certain migrants, so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can arrest them after their hearings and place them in expedited removal.
Unlike immigration court cases, which typically take years to complete due to a backlog of millions of unresolved claims, expedited removal allows officials to more quickly deport migrants who arrived to the U.S. in the past two years. Those placed in that process face summary deportation from the U.S. unless they express concerns of being persecuted in their home countries and prove to an asylum officer that their fear is credible.
The courthouse arrests have been reported in cities across the U.S., with videos emerging showing ICE officials detaining migrants immediately after their hearings conclude. In some cases, those taken into custody have been seen weeping and visibly distraught. The practice has been strongly decried by Democratic lawmakers and advocates, who say it punishes people who are trying to follow the legal process by showing up to their hearings.
In her opinion, Cobb found the Trump administration’s efforts to be illegal, saying the lawsuit against the expedited deportations raised a “question of fair play.” She noted the plaintiffs in the case, two migrants from Cuba and Venezuela, had “played by the rules,” entered the country with the government’s permission and attended their court hearings — and were nonetheless targeted for expedited deportation.
“This case’s underlying question, then, asks whether parolees who escaped oppression will have the chance to plead their case within a system of rules,” Cobb wrote. “Or, alternatively, will they be summarily removed from a country that — as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers — may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?”
Stephen Yale-Loehr, an expert in U.S. immigration law, said Cobb’s order could mean that “several hundred thousand people will be temporarily spared from immediate removal under the expedited removal procedures.”
Yale-Loehr noted the ruling is a reprieve for many of the more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who were allowed into the U.S. through the parole authority, under a Biden administration sponsorship policy. It also protects some of the nearly 1 million migrants paroled into the U.S. along the southern border under another Biden-era policy powered by a now-discontinued phone app known as CBP One.
In a statement, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin denounced Friday’s order.
“This ruling is lawless and won’t stand,” McLaughlin said.
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