Jonathan Turley Explains How Latest Court Ruling Could Slow Deportations to a ‘Crawl’

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday that a federal judge’s ruling could slow deportations if it is upheld on appeal.

United States Senior District Judge Beryl Howell of the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, ruled that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could not arrest illegal immigrants without “probable cause” and ordered that ICE agents who make arrests must document the facts leading up to the arrests, WJLA reported. Turley told “Fox and Friends” guest co-host Kayleigh McEnany that the decision puts “handcuffs” on ICE.

“This really captures the problem that they are facing,” Turley said. “The Biden Administration opened up the southern border and let millions of people through and people like [former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro] Mayorkas said, ‘Well, we are doing everything we can.’ We now know that was a lie, because the Trump Administration shut down the southern border within weeks using the same authority Mayorkas and Biden had.”

“But once these millions were in the country, you have many in Congress that said well, we don’t want to make it any easier to remove them,” Turley continued. “And so what ICE is looking at, and what the administration is looking at, are millions of people that they would now be required to get individual warrants for and that would just reduce this to a slow crawl when they are trying to gain some ground back of what was lost during the Biden Administration.”

The Border Patrol encountered millions of illegal immigrants during the Biden administration, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Upon taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration, including designating Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations.

“Really, the Supreme Court is going to have to look at these standards,” Turley told McEnany. “The administration is saying we should only have to show reasonable suspicion that someone is in this country illegally, we believe these people are flight risks. This judge has good faith reasons why she said, you know, I think the law says to the contrary.”