From CBS News: A federal judge on Friday blocked a Trump administration effort to expand fast-track deportations throughout the U.S. under a process known as expedited removal, indicating that officials are trampling on migrants’ due process through the policy’s expansion.
While it will almost certainly be appealed, Friday’s order is a major setback for the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, including its campaign to arrest asylum-seekers at immigration courthouses across the U.S. — an operation that has relied on the expansion of expedited removal.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb paused 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.
Expedited removal allows federal immigration officials to quickly deport certain migrants, without allowing them to see an immigration judge, unless they claim asylum and pass an interview with a U.S. asylum officer. Before President Trump took office for a second time, the fast-track deportations only applied to unauthorized migrants apprehended within 100 miles of an international border and who had been in the U.S. for less than two weeks.
In the ruling issued Friday evening, Judge Cobb sided with the pro-immigrant advocates who challenged the expedited removal process, as they claimed the effort “violates the due process rights of those it affects.”
FEDERAL COURT PUTS A HALT TO ICE’S EXPANDED USE OF EXPEDITED REMOVALS INCLUDING AT COURT HOUSES
Wow! Judge Jia Cobb is in our news twice in one day! First because she’s the judge in the Lisa Cook matter. And now because she just handed down this exquisite opinion in a case… pic.twitter.com/JmeuWwPxjM
— Anne P. Mitchell Esq (@annepmitchell) August 30, 2025
ABOUT THIS JUDGE: Jia Cobb, 45, is a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Cobb was appointed in June 2021 by Joe Biden. Confirmed by the Senate in late October 2024, she was one of the judges then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed through for approval during the last few months of the Biden administration.
Cobb is also the same judge who has been assigned the case of Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook’s lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from firing her.
🚨 BREAKING: DEI Judge Jia Cobb unilaterally blocks President Trump’s immigration policy, deciding that he is no longer allowed to expeditiously deport criminal illegal aliens because Trump risks deporting foreigners not eligible to be sent home.
One word: coup. Unreal. pic.twitter.com/gSvORiFwuz
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 30, 2025
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