RIGHT SPEAK: Judge Blocks Trump Administration’s Push for Swifter Immigrant Deportations

Photo: Bob Daemmrich/Zuma Press

Policy, applied to those found within 100 miles of U.S. borders, was expanded nationwide in July

A federal district judge blocked the Trump administration from expanding a policy allowing the government to quickly deport illegal immigrants without going through immigration courts.

The policy, known as expedited removal, is currently applied to immigrants who are found within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian borders, and who entered the U.S. illegally in the last two weeks.

In July, the Trump administration moved to expand the application of the policy to the entire country and to any immigrant who entered the U.S. illegally in the previous two years.

Late on Friday, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson took issue with the process the administration used to expand the policy.

The expedited deportations can continue in areas near the borders.

President Trump first ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to expand use of expedited removal in a broad, immigration-related executive order issued days after he took office. The Department of Homeland Security took 2½ years to carry out the policy, but when it did in July, it skipped over a customary comment period to implement the change swifter.

“If a policy decision that an agency makes is of sufficient consequence that it qualifies as an agency rule, then arbitrariness in deciding the contours of that rule—e.g., decision making by Ouija board or dart board, rock/paper/scissors, or even the Magic 8 Ball—simply will not do,” wrote Judge Jackson, who was appointed by former President Obama.

Immigration officials defended the policy change as necessary to divert more cases from immigration courts, which are working through a historically large backlog of cases that has grown to more than a million this year.