A federal judge on Friday temporarily barred the Trump administration from expediting deportations amid President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the administration’s moves to speed up the removal of undocumented migrants without appearing before a judge stood in the way of individual 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 wrote. “Were that right, not only noncitizens, but everyone would be at risk,”
She continued in the 48-page opinion, “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,” she added. “Fortunately, that is not the law.”
Trump, who vowed on the campaign trail to conduct mass deportations, has focused much of his immigration agenda on targeting long-standing programs that provide migrants lawful pathways to citizenship. On his first day back in the Oval Office, the president signed a flurry of executive orders that restricted immigration and boosted border security.
In the months since, the administration has leaned heavily into promoting self-deportation, funding more Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the U.S. and expediting deportation flights under a provision in the Alien Enemies Act. The moves have sparked controversy, criticism and legal battles.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this year also expanded its use of the expedited removal process, which gives the administration the authority to fast-track deportations for undocumented migrants who have been in the U.S. under two years.
Cobb, appointed by former President Biden in 2021, said her decision was based on the lack of due process — but did not cast doubt on the constitutionality or application of the expedited removal process.
“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,” she wrote in the opinion. “The procedures currently in place fall short.”
The judge added later that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process.”
The latest ruling comes less than a month after Cobb agreed to temporarily block the administration’s plans to fast-track the removal of undocumented migrants who entered the U.S. legally under the Biden-era process called humanitarian parole — which was started to ease pressure at the border.
The Hill has reached out to DHS for comment.
