Donald Trump: Federal Supreme Court stops deportation procedures

The US government’s deportation policy has suffered a judicial defeat. A judge at the Federal Supreme Court in Washington DC has initially stopped the accelerated deportation procedures for migrants. The right of those affected to a proper, constitutional procedure must be guaranteed, judge Jia Cobb justified her decision published on Friday, and thus agreed with the lawsuit of an organization that is committed to the rights of migrants.

In his inaugural speech, US President Donald Trump has announced that he wanted to deport “millions and millions of crime” of irregular migrants. His government therefore has an accelerated deportation procedure that has previously been used in border regions and in cases in which migrants were in the country for less than 14 days, to migrants across the country.

In her decision, the judge criticized the government’s proceedings as “poor,” and referred to the right, which was anchored in the US constitution, that people may not be deported from the United States without having previously had the opportunity to be heard. This also applies to people who are illegally in the country.

The judge appointed by Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden had already criticized the government’s approach in a similar decision at the beginning of August. Mass deports were a central promise of campaigns by Trump. Raids and arrests have been staged publicly since taking office.

It is estimated that around eleven million people live without valid papers in the United States. Many of them do an indispensable work for the US economy – for example in agriculture, in construction and in the catering trade.