Then-candidate Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP).
A federal judge delivered a blow to President Donald Trump“s immigration crackdown on Friday, halting his administration’s efforts to speed up deportations without due process — noting how “everyone would be at risk” of losing their rights if the government got its way, “not only noncitizens.”
“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,” wrote U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Joe Biden appointee, in a 48-page opinion handed down in District Court for the District of Columbia.
“By merely accusing you of entering unlawfully, the government would deprive you of any meaningful opportunity to disprove its allegations,” Cobb said. “Fortunately, that is not the law. The Constitution guarantees that ‘no person shall be removed from the United States without opportunity, at some time, to be heard.’Â That is equally true of those here unlawfully.”
Cobb refused to mince words throughout her ruling, accusing the Trump administration of shredding due process in a rush to deport people from the country without giving them “the right to hire counsel, examine and present evidence, and cross-examine witnesses,” according to the Washington judge.
“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.”
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In a separate case, Cobb blocked the Trump administration earlier this month from summarily deporting immigrants who were previously allowed into the country and harshly upbraided the federal government over its various removal schemes. Plaintiffs did not raise a constitutional due process claim, but Cobb did note how immigrants at the center of the case — and Trump’s deportation crusade in general — have “fled oppressive regimes and perilous conditions in their home countries” and “played by the rules” to get to the United States, and now they’re being punished for it, per Cobb.
On Friday, Cobb described how the Make the Road immigrant advocacy group is suing the Trump administration after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expanded its use of the expedited removal process. She said that the group has put forward evidence, which the government has not disputed, accusing it of setting a goal in May of making 3,000 immigration arrests each day.
“Apparently in an effort to meet that goal, the government began targeting for expedited removal people already in section 240 removal proceedings, many of whom are pursuing asylum and other collateral relief,” Cobb explained.
“In its declarations, Make the Road details numerous arrests of individuals at their immigration court hearings,” the judge said. “These arrests follow a common pattern, with DHS first moving orally (without any advance notice) to dismiss the individual’s pending section 240 proceedings, then arresting the individual at the courthouse immediately upon the dismissal of their section 240 proceedings, and then, finally, placing the individual in expedited removal proceedings through which they can be deported far more quickly, and with far less process, than they would have been in the section 240 proceedings.”
According to Cobb, “the record” reveals that the government’s “expanded expedited removal efforts have not been limited to courthouses” and immigrants are now being snatched off the streets in “workplace raids” that are touted as being a “new phase of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown,” per the Friday ruling.
“A DHS spokesperson stated that ‘2,000 immigrants per day were arrested’ during the first week in June,” Cobb recounted. “Given these enforcement efforts, Make the Road calls it a ‘near-certainty that even more people’ — including its members — ‘will be placed in expedited removal.'”
While Cobb called out the Trump administration for ignoring due process laws, she did not question the constitutionality or government’s 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,” Cobb said. “The procedures currently in place fall short.”
In her ruling earlier this month, Cobb rejected claims from the government that the plaintiffs in that case had improperly challenged the Trump administration’s policy directives by using the wrong statute to push for an effective injunction and because the actions had already gone into effect. Cobb explained that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the federal statute governing the behavior of departments and agencies, expressly authorizes courts to issue such stays against unlawful agency actions.
DHS blasted Cobb’s most recent ruling in a statement over the weekend, saying: “This activist judge’s ruling ignores the President’s clear authorities under both Article II of the Constitution and the plain language of federal law. … President Trump has a mandate to arrest and deport the worst of the worst. We have the law, facts, and common sense on our side.”
