Trump Fast-Track Deportation Order Is Target of New Lawsuit
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is facing another lawsuit, this time over expanding fast-track deportation for people who can’t prove their long-term residency in the country.
The case, brought in Washington federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of immigration advocacy group Make the Road New York, challenges a Department of Homeland Security rule issued on Jan. 21. The policy allows immigration officers to carry out “expedited removal” for people found anywhere in the country without legal status who can’t prove US residency for at least two years.
Trump has long embraced hard-line immigration policies and made them a priority during his first days in office. He’s already facing a string of lawsuits over an executive order seeking to end automatic birthright citizenship for babies born to parents who are unlawfully in the country or on non-permanent visas to work, study or visit.
Trump had adopted the expanded fast-track deportation rule in his first term and faced legal challenges. A federal appeals court allowed the policy to take effect in 2020, though that ruling didn’t address all of the claims that challengers raised at the time for why it was unlawful. They’re pressing the same claims in the latest case.
Under the Biden administration, the rule was replaced with an expedited removal policy limited to people found within 100 miles of a land border who couldn’t prove they had been in the country longer than two weeks. Under Trump’s new policy, the two-week rule is still in effect for people taken into custody by immigration authorities within 100 miles of a border.
The challengers in the new complaint argue that the expedited removal process is “rife with errors and results in widespread violations of individuals’ legal rights.” They wrote that US citizens and people with “bona fide fears of persecution” in their home countries had been wrongly deported in the past.
“The rule is illegal. Without relief from this court, individuals living anywhere in this country are at risk of being separated from their families and expelled from the country without any meaningful process,” the ACLU lawyers wrote.
Spokespeople for the Homeland Security and Justice Department declined to comment on the suit.
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