A federal judge in Massachusetts on Friday barred the Trump administration from implementing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy allowing the rapid deportation of hundreds of migrants to countries other than their own without due process.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction on the DHS policy. The injunction effectively halts the DHS from implementing the policy until the legal claims play out in court.

In granting the injunction, Murphy found that the plaintiffs showed a likelihood of success on the merits, a possibility of irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted, a balance of hardships that favored the plaintiff, and that the injunction is in the public interest. “Plaintiffs are simply asking to be told they are going to be deported to a new country before they are taken to such a country, and be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death,” Murphy wrote.

The order also grants class-action status to non-US citizens who are facing removal orders and may be sent to a country not designated in their initial immigration proceedings. The order cites hundreds of potential class members. The court explained, “What Plaintiffs challenge is Defendants’ authority to effectively depart from the removal orders by designating new countries for removal outside of the immigration proceedings and, in doing so, circumvent Plaintiffs’ due-process rights…”

DHS argues that the non-citizens can file motions to reopen their immigration proceedings, but Murphy wrote in his order that this presents a “legally insufficient and logistically impossible” remedy and that the government’s “obligations under Convention Against Torture (CAT) and the Due Process Clause require more.”

Immigrants may seek refuge in the US from violence in their home countries. In immigration removal proceedings, they can make a case not to be returned to their home country due to fear of being persecuted, tortured, or killed if they are returned, or perhaps to a neighboring country.

DHS issued a directive in February to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to review cases with removal orders to determine whether these non-citizens could be sent to other countries. The DHS guidance announced in March permits sending non-citizens to countries where officials have “provided diplomatic assurances that aliens removed from the United States will not be persecuted or tortured…and if the Department of State believes those assurances to be credible, the alien may be removed without the need for further procedures.”

Prior to the order Friday, Murphy had issued a temporary restraining order against DHS in the same case.