A federal judge on Friday evening has blocked the efforts by the Trump administration to expand the process of fast-tracking deportations.
The decision, by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, claims that the application of the sped-up process creates a “significant risk” that some immigrants who may be entitled to stay in the U.S. will instead by hustled out of the country.
Cobb said that foreigners impacted by the expanded process “must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment.”
The decision was based on a request by an immigrant advocacy group to put a hold on policies issued in January by the newly installed Trump administration that called for “expedited removal,” according to Politico.
The fast-track deportation process over most of the past two decades applied only to foreigners intercepted within 100 miles of a U.S. land border and within two weeks of entering the U.S.
But that changed in Donald Trump’s first term in office when, in 2019, the policy was expanded to apply anywhere in the U.S. and to any illegal alien who could not prove they had been in the country for more than two years.
When Biden came to office, the policy was rolled back, but Trump reversed it again in one of his first acts of his second term as president.
This is another controversial ruling following the Supreme Court’s June 2025 ruling in Trump v. CASA, Inc., which held that such broad injunctions by district courts exceed the authority granted to federal courts by Congress and therefore must be limited to providing relief only to the specific plaintiffs before the court.
