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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 U.S. 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.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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