By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) -A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from fast-tracking the deportation of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were paroled into the United States under Biden-era humanitarian programs.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C. said it served the public interest to put on hold the Department of Homeland Security’s expedited removals for those who entered with temporary parole, rather than cause irreparable harm to immigrants by allowing them.
Cobb also quoted a recent dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in rejecting DHS’ assertion of a substantial interest in carrying out President Donald Trump’s policies, including the prompt removal of immigrants not entitled to stay.
“This case presents a question of fair play,” Cobb wrote. “This court will not endorse the radical proposition that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the law.”
DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Expedited removals could allow immigrant parolees to be deported without hearings or lawyers.
The lawsuit challenging them had been brought by three immigrant rights groups whose members included parolees subject to that process.
“Over the last few months, immigrants who entered the country with parole have been living a nightmare,” Ama Frimpong, legal director of one of the groups, CASA, said in a statement. “They can now sleep a little easier with the relief, however temporary it is, that this court decision has offered.”
Trump, a Republican, has sought to deport record numbers of immigrants, but complained that courts and existing laws get in the way.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent months arrested immigrants at courthouses, following a legal maneuver where immigration judges dropped people’s cases so that they could be placed in expedited removal.
Cobb was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden.
The case is Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights et al v Noem et al, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, No. 25-00872.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington, D.C.)
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