A day after the Trump administration dramatically expanded speedy deportation powers as part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move.

The new policy, known as "expedited removal," empowers immigration officials to quickly deport people who are in the country illegally without going before a judge — even if they have lived here for up to two years and are far from the border. The policy could pave the way for mass deportations.

When officials released the policy earlier this week, they wrote that it would "enhance national security and public safety" and reduce government costs.

But attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Make The Road New York, an immigrant-serving organization in New York, argued that the policy violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

"President Trump's draconian decision to rapidly impose mass deportations violates the fundamental right of hundreds of thousands of people to a fair trial in court," New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. Calling the behavior "cruel" and "extremist," he said it would "deprive children of parents, families without breadwinners, businesses without workers, and immigrant communities in chaos."

Federal Department of Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

expedited repatriation policy announced on tuesday The notice released is largely similar to similar policies rolled out in the summer of 2019 during Trump's first term.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups immediately filed suit, and the matter dragged on in court for months. President Biden repealed the policy after taking office, and litigation over the policy has stalled.

Under the expedited deportation policy, the Department of Homeland Security seeks to expand a decades-old deportation process near the border. This allows immigration officials to deport people who have been in the United States for less than two weeks if they are caught within 100 miles of the border.

The Trump administration sought to expand the measure nationwide and extend the deadline from two weeks to two years.

Immigration legal advocates then, as now, viewed the move as a "significant departure" from "a century-old norm of providing notice, access to counsel, preparation opportunities, and contested hearings to all noncitizens in the United States." before they were deported.

The new process means Border Patrol agents can stop someone and decide whether they should be deported in less than an hour.

"People go through a much less formal process when they get a traffic ticket, and the consequences are much more serious," said Anand Balakrishnan, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrant Rights Project and lead counsel on the case. Much more.”

Agents often make mistakes, he said.

"That's why no other government has expanded it in this way," he said. "It creates a completely unaccountable system of unilateral power in the hands of individual officials to make critically important choices."