An immigration group sued on Wednesday to block President Donald Trump's move to expand fast-track deportations under his pledge to remove millions of people who are in the country illegally.
People facing fast-track deportations do not have access to an attorney and are unable to present evidence against their removal from the U.S., according to a complaint by Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group.
The lawsuit said the policy known as expedited removal violated the constitutional right to due process, immigration law and administrative law.
The group asked a District of Columbia federal judge to restrict expedited removal to conditions applied by the Biden administration, which only allowed people apprehended within 14 days of entering the country and within 100 miles (160 km) of the border to be subject to the procedure.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security expanded use of expedited removal to anyone who entered the country illegally, lacked legal status and failed to prove he or she had been in the U.S. for at least two years.
The policy denies legal protections that exist in regular removal proceedings, which can take years. Expedited removal can be done in a matter of days or even hours, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute.
"Expanding expedited removal would give Trump a cheat code to circumvent due process and the Constitution,” said a statement from Anand Balakrishnan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Make the Road New York.
Trump's expansion of the rule mirrors a policy he put in place in 2019, during his first term in the White House.
