Court puts Trump administration's plan to speed some deportations on ice

Men stand in a US Immigration and Border Enforcement detention centre in McAllen, Texas. Picture: Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post via AP

Men stand in a US Immigration and Border Enforcement detention centre in McAllen, Texas. Picture: Josh Dawsey/The Washington Post via AP

Published Sep 28, 2019

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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. 

Reuters

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