US appeals court rejects Trump bid to fast-track migrant deportations

BOSTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday declined to lift an order blocking the Trump administration from sending people with final deportation orders to countries not cited in earlier proceedings without first letting them make a case for humanitarian protection.    

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request by President Donald Trump's administration to put on hold a nationwide temporary restraining order issued by a judge on March 28. 

The order has hobbled its ability to fast-track deportations of thousands of migrants who could not be removed to the countries they originated from for reasons including that the individuals had already won protections against being sent back.

Immigrant legal rights groups sued last week to prevent the administration from deporting migrants with final orders of removal to countries that were not previously raised in their immigration proceedings.

Their lawsuit, filed last week on behalf of a group of migrants, took aim at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy designed to fast-track the deportations of thousands of migrants who had been released from detention.

The migrants' lawyers argue the policy exposed an untold number of people to the risk of being sent to countries they did not originate from and that were not listed in their final deportation orders as potential locations for deportation.

They said that lack of notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deprived them of the ability to raise claims that they feared they could suffer persecution, torture or death if deported to those newly identified countries.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, concluded on March 28 that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of showing that the administration's practice violated their due process rights.

The judge, in a subsequent written version of his decision, said the administration had shown no concern that without a court order, deportations in violation of the Convention Against Torture could regularly and immediately occur.

"Due process requires that an individual be given notice of where they are being taken and a meaningful opportunity to show that, if taken there, they will likely be subject to persecution, torture, or death," he wrote.

The Trump administration swiftly appealed what it called an "unlawful" order by Murphy, saying the judge lacked jurisdiction and abused his discretion to issue a nationwide restraining order that would interfere with the president's immigration authority.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a brief on Saturday that Murphy "has potentially prevented the execution of possibly thousands of pending removal orders and may have irreparably harmed the executive's ability to negotiate the return of aliens to countries of which they are not a citizen."

While the appeal was pending, the Department of Homeland Security issued new guidance on Sunday providing that, before a migrant can be deported to a third country, that country needed to state that it had provided diplomatic assurances that migrants would not be persecuted or tortured.

The Justice Department last week asked Murphy to advise whether he would dissolve his restraining order in light of the guidance. The judge asked the plaintiffs to respond to that request by March 28.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the migrants at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, in a statement faulted the new policy, saying a promise from a foreign government to not torture people "is neither legal nor enforceable."

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Richard Chang)