Washington - A federal judge ordered the
Department of Homeland Security to set aside a plan that would
make more people vulnerable to expedited deportation until a
court can rule on the matter.
The lawsuit, filed by WeCount! and other immigration
advocates, asked a Washington court to overturn a plan making
undocumented people eligible for deportation without court
oversight unless they could prove they had been in the country
more than two years.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction on
Friday, setting aside the rule until it can be litigated, saying
that the people represented by the immigration advocates "would
be irreparably harmed by the challenged agency action."
Previously, only those immigrants detained within 100 miles
(161 kilometers) of the border who had been in the country two
weeks or less could be ordered rapidly deported. The policy
makes an exception for immigrants who can establish a "credible
fear" of persecution in their home country.
The US Justice Department said in an email statement that
the decision "undermines the laws enacted by Congress and the
Trump Administration’s careful efforts to implement those laws."
"Congress expressly authorized the Secretary of Homeland
Security to act with dispatch to remove from the country aliens
who have no right to be here," a department spokesman said,
adding that granting the preliminary injunction "vastly exceeds
the district court’s own authority."
Also on Friday, a federal judge in California blocked a
Trump administration rule that would have allowed indefinite
detention of migrant families, saying it was inconsistent with a
decades-old court settlement that governs conditions for migrant
children in U.S. custody.