A federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration policy to expand expedited deportations across the United States under a process known as expedited removal, saying authorities are violating immigrants' due process with the expansion of the policy.

The judge's ruling U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C., is blocking the Trump administration from using expedited removal for immigrants with parole or conditional immigration status. "The Court does not second-guess the constitutionality of the expedited removal law or its prolonged application at the border," Cobb wrote in a 48-page opinion. Friday's order is a major setback for the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts, including its campaign to arrest asylum seekers in immigration courts across the United States, an operation that has relied on the expansion of expedited removal, though Judge Cobb's decision is almost certain to be appealed. She simply holds that, in applying the law to a huge group of people living in the interior of the country who have not previously been subject to expedited removal, the government must afford them due process and that current procedures are insufficient. Earlier this month, Cobb temporarily blocked the Trump administration's efforts to expand expedited deportations of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) who entered the United States legally on humanitarian parole.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb put on hold a January directive that had expanded the expedited removal policy, long limited to border areas and recent arrivals, to anywhere in the country and to those who arrived in the past two years.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the Trump administration over the policy on behalf of Make the Road New York,an immigrant rights group, after the Department of Homeland Security said on January 21 that it was expanding the use of expedited removal to speed up the deportation of undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for two years or less.

What is expedited removal?

Expedited removal allows federal immigration officials to quickly deport certain migrants, without allowing them to appear before an immigration judge, unless they apply for asylum and pass an interview with a U.S. asylum officer.

Expedited removal is a procedure that allows for the removal of immigrants from the United States without the right to a hearing before a judge.

Before President Trump took office for the second time, expedited removals only applied to immigrants without parole who were apprehended within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of an international border and who had been in the United States for less than two weeks. United.