In Latest Blow to Trump's Mass Deportation Plan, Judge Blocks Overhaul of Immigration Appeals

Immigrant rights advocates on Monday hailed a federal judge's ruling that blocked significant portions of President Donald Trump's proposed policy changes regarding the Board of Immigration Appeals, which had been scheduled to go into effect this week and would have "eviscerated noncitizens’ right to appeal decisions in their immigration cases," according to rights groups.

In the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Randolph Moss issued a late-night order on Sunday calling Trump's rule titled “Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals,” which was proposed last month, “a fast-track mechanism for disposing of the vast majority” of immigration court appeals.

The proposed rule would have reduced the time immigrants have to file appeals from 30 days to just 10 days; required summary dismissal of appeals unless a majority of the Board of Immigration Appeals' (BIA) 15 permanent members voted to accept the case for review within 10 days; and permitted case dismissals before records were transmitted to the board.

Moss said the administration had violated the legal requirement for the government to notify the public of its proposed changes to a federal rule and provide an opportunity for public comment. The Trump administration could potentially try again to change the immigration appeals process.

Laura St. John, legal director for the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, said the ruling "keeps in place a basic, yet critical, protection for immigrants facing removal: the ability to appeal their case."

"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated, all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."

"As the administration continues to try to deport as many people as they can quickly and often without a fair day in court, it is critical for everyone to have the opportunity to file an appeal," said St. John. "Without this decision, countless immigrants with valid claims would have been hurriedly deported to dangerous conditions, forsaking due process for efficiency.”

The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project is one of several groups that sued the administration over the proposed rule, with Democracy Forward, the American Immigration Council, and the National Immigrant Justice Center representing the plaintiffs.

St. John argued in court that it can take at least a week for advocacy groups to prepare materials and file an appeal to the BIA after it has determined a noncitizen can be deported. Forcing immigrants and their legal teams to file an appeal within 10 days would leave many without any "meaningful review" of their cases, St. John said.

While the Executive Office for Immigration Review claimed the new policy would swiftly reduce the backlog of cases before the BIA, Moss wrote in his opinion, the plaintiffs argued that the provisions would "operate in combination to deprive almost all affected parties of the administrative appellate review 'that they were previously entitled to.'"

Erez Reuveni, senior counsel at Democracy Forward, said the decision "makes it clear that the Trump-Vance administration cannot play games with the immigration appeals system to eliminate basic due process and fast-track deportations."

Reuveni is a former Department of Justice lawyer who revealed in a whistleblower complaint last year that DOJ staffers had been advised by the Trump administration to ignore court orders in order to swiftly carry out Trump's mass deportation agenda.

“Once again, no matter how hard this administration tries to hide its cruel and unlawful actions behind an ‘immigration policy,’ a federal court has made clear that the government must follow the law and cannot strip people of their basic rights," he said. "We will continue representing our plaintiffs in court to defend their rights and hold this administration accountable.”

The Department of Homeland Security has not regularly disclosed the number of people it is deporting under the Trump administration; internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed last year that more than 10,000 people were being deported per month.

Moss' ruling came less than a month after US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in the Central District of California threw out a BIA decision that endorsed the administration's policy of denying bond hearings to immigrants with no criminal records who have been detained. A federal appeals court issued a temporary pause on that ruling last Friday after the White House appealed.

Mary Georgevich, a senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said Moss' ruling was "an important win in the face of an administration that is intent on dismantling our immigration system at any cost, including betraying our country’s shared values of the importance of due process and access to counsel."

"Allowing the Trump administration’s reckless proposal to block immigrants from a fair opportunity for review of bad decisions would have resulted in people being returned to danger and families unjustly separated," she said, "all to serve a racist mass deportation agenda."