Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Immigration Rulings
Government Relations
FAIR Take | March 2022
Background
President Joe Biden nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court in late February, beginning the confirmation process to serve on the country’s highest court. While Judge Jackson has a limited tenure as a federal judge, with seven years on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and 8 months on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Jackson has written four important decisions regarding immigration issues. Although her rulings on immigration have yielded mixed results, her opinions provide some insight and concern regarding her legal philosophy.
Immigration Rulings
In Make the Road New York v. McAleenan, Judge Jackson issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump administration from expanding its use of Expedited Removal to the temporal and geographic bounds explicitly permitted by statute. Historically, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) has only applied Expedited Removal procedures (which fast track hearings of recent illegal border crossers) to those who have entered the United States within the prior 14 days and have been encountered by an immigration officer within 100 air miles of the border. To strengthen immigration enforcement in the interior of the United States and address serious resource constraints caused by the mounting border crisis, the Trump administration expanded its application of Expedited Removal in 2019 to aliens who have entered the United States within two years of apprehension, consistent with the perimeters explicitly authorized by law.
https://www.fairus.org/legislation/presidential-administration/legal-immigration/judge-ketanji-brown-jacksons-immigration
