A federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration effort that aims to speed deportations of migrants detained in the interior of the United States, slamming it as a violation of due process.
Unlike migrants detained at or near the border, who have previously been subject to expedited removal, the people the administration are now targeting have “long since entered” the country, wrote US District Court Judge Jia Cobb.
“That means that they have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment,” said Cobb, who was nominated to the federal bench in Washington, DC, by former President Joe Biden.
The push to accelerate deportations was put into effect in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, expanding a Department of Homeland Security policy that had previously limited expedited removal to migrants detained within 100 miles of the US border and who had been present in the country for less than two weeks. Cobb was particularly unhappy with the idea that the administration believed none of the migrants should enjoy due process rights.
“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, but instead must accept whatever grace Congress affords them,” Cobb added. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk. The Government could accuse you of entering unlawfully, relegate you to a bare-bones proceeding where it would ‘prove’ your unlawful entry, and then immediately remove you.”
“By merely accusing you of entering unlawfully, the Government would deprive you of any meaningful opportunity to disprove its allegations,” the judge added. “Fortunately, that is not the law.”
Make the Road New York, the immigrant advocacy group challenging the policy, argued at a hearing last month that it’s already being used to arrest people at immigration court and deport them without a hearing — in violation of their constitutional right to due process. The group claims the law is ambiguous and that DHS is overstepping its authority by using the policy to detain individuals who are actively trying to comply with the legal process.
The government, meanwhile, urged the court to let the policy take effect, arguing that it is a lawful exercise of executive authority intended to streamline enforcement and reduce court backlogs.
“The Court does not cast doubt on the constitutionality of the expedited removal statute, nor on its longstanding application at the border,” Cobb said in her Friday decision. “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.”
Separately, earlier this month, Cobb paused enforcement of a Trump rule to fast-track the deportation of migrants who legally entered the United States through humanitarian parole programs.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Angelica Franganillo Diaz contributed to this report.
