Attorney General William Tong signed onto an amicus brief opposing the Trump administration’s “legally flawed” effort to expand expedited removal, a process that drastically reduces the turn around time of deportations.
“Move fast and break things should never apply to families, lives, or our Constitution,” said Tong.
Connecticut is one of 20 states to have joined in filing the amicus brief in Make the Road New York vs. Kristi Noem, et al., a Federal appeal case currently in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C.
Expedited removal has typically been used as a process to reject immigrants at the border sans a court case or hearing. Upon Trump’s inauguration, his administration announced its intent to use expedited removal to deport any immigrants residing in the country’s interior for less than two years.
The ACLU and Make the Road New York, a grassroots immigrant rights organization based out of New York, filed suit against this practice in January 2025, claiming it violates the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process, as well as violating other pertinent immigration laws. In August, a federal judge issued an injunction on Trump’s expansion of expedited removal, but the administration has since appealed it.
“Expansion of expedited removal into the interior of the United States threatens to result in the detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully present or who have grounds to adjust their immigration status,” reads the amicus brief. “Amici States will suffer harms flowing from wrongful removals and the predictable consequences of such removals: separated families, traumatized children, diminished workforces, and harms to States’ economies.”
The amicus brief noted that deportations can be “among the most severe and consequential deprivations of liberty an individual can experience,” and that while even the traditional deportation process sans expedited removal is abbreviated, they at least provide the, “ability to present testimony and other evidence, the right to be represented by counsel at one’s own expense, the right to examine the government’s evidence and witnesses, and the right to appeal and seek judicial review.”
“These basic features are absent in the 2025 Designation’s expansion of expedited removal, notwithstanding that they are the very procedural safeguards that previously were available to those whom the 2025 Designation would now subject to expedited removal,” reads the brief. “Ironically, these individuals would now receive greater protection against a potentially erroneous traffic ticket than in facing years-long and potentially permanent exile.”
Tong’s statement argued that allowing expedited removal’s expansion would place far too much power in the hands of individual immigration officers, who would be given the final say on ordering deportations without any right to a legal appeal. Tong argued this would invariably lead to an increase in faulty deportations, which will heighten fear among even legal residents and citizens that are members of communities traditionally targeted by immigration enforcement officers.
The other 19 amici states are California, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Washington D.C. has also signed on.
“The Trump Administration is making terrible errors everywhere,” said Tong. “They are erroneously detaining and deporting American citizens, ripping families apart, ignoring grave and legitimate asylum claims, and shackling people on one-way flights to horrific foreign jungle prisons. The legal protections guaranteed by our Constitution cannot be erased on the whims of an erratic and impatient president.”
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