Judge blocks expansion of expedited removal to interior US

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from expanding expedited removal, the fasttrack deportation process, to immigrants detained in the interior of the United States, finding the widened policy poses significant due process risks. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C., issued the order after plaintiffs challenged a January directive that would have allowed immigration officials to remove certain noncitizens nationwide without hearings before immigration judges.

Cobb, in a 48 page opinion, halted the guidance and the expansion that would have applied expedited removal beyond the border and to people who entered the United States within the past two years. She said the government had not adapted procedures to protect the rights of migrants who have been living in the country for some time and therefore have a "weighty liberty interest" in remaining here. "In so holding, the Court does not cast doubt on the constitutionality of the expedited removal statute, nor on its longstanding application at the border," Cobb wrote. "It merely holds that in applying the statute to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who...