Appeals court overturns Biden-appointed judge, revives Trump's nationwide expedited removal policy

A federal appeals court handed the Trump administration a major legal win Monday, reversing a lower court order that had frozen the government's authority to fast-track deportations of illegal immigrants found anywhere in the United States. The 2-1 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a nationwide stay imposed by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, and restored the Department of Homeland Security's power to carry out expedited removals without a full immigration court hearing.

The decision means DHS can once again remove illegal immigrants who entered the country unlawfully and cannot demonstrate at least two years of continuous presence, a process that can unfold in days or even hours rather than the months or years typical of standard removal proceedings.

Judge Justin Walker wrote the majority opinion, concluding that challengers were unlikely to succeed on their claim that the policy violates constitutional due process protections. The ruling dismantles a legal roadblock that had stalled a central pillar of the administration's immigration enforcement agenda for nearly ten months, as Newsmax reported.

What the ruling says, and what it rejects

At the heart of the case was a challenge brought by Make the Road, an advocacy organization that argued DHS must proactively inform illegal immigrants about every possible legal defense, including the two-year continuous-presence exemption, before removing them. Judge Cobb had sided with that argument, finding a "significant risk" that individuals could be wrongly deported before getting a meaningful chance to prove they qualified for an exemption.

The D.C. Circuit majority flatly rejected that reasoning. Walker, as Fox News Digital reported, wrote that the Constitution requires notice and an opportunity to respond, not a government tutorial on how to beat deportation:

"The constitutional requirement is notice of the action the government is taking and the grounds for it, plus an opportunity to respond. It is not a requirement that the government explain how the individual might prevail."

Walker pressed the point further, noting that the challengers offered "no limiting principle" for their demand. If DHS had to explain the two-year rule, the logic would require officers to spell out every conceivable basis for contesting removal, an obligation no court has ever imposed.

The majority also addressed evidence in the record that some individuals had been erroneously subjected to expedited removal despite having lived in the country for more than two years. Walker acknowledged that such errors, if they occurred, would be illegal. But the fault would lie with individual officers who failed to follow the law, not with the written directives themselves.

That distinction matters. It draws a line between a policy that is facially unconstitutional and one that might be misapplied in specific cases. The court refused to let scattered enforcement errors serve as grounds for shutting down an entire nationwide program.

The dissent and the Obama-appointed judge behind it

Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, dissented. He argued that DHS procedures fail to give illegal immigrants a "meaningful opportunity" to demonstrate two years of continuous presence. His objection centered on the practical mechanics of the process rather than on the statute's text, a framing the majority found unpersuasive.

The AP noted that the two judges in the majority, Walker and Judge Neomi Rao, were both appointed by President Trump, while Wilkins was appointed by President Obama. That lineup will give critics ammunition, but the majority's reasoning rested on well-established due process doctrine, not on partisan loyalty.

Wilkins's concern about procedural fairness is not frivolous on its face. But the majority opinion makes a compelling textual point: Congress gave the executive branch broad authority over expedited removal, and the Constitution does not require the government to coach individuals through every possible defense before enforcing the law.

The pattern of Biden-era judges blocking Trump immigration enforcement, only to be reversed on appeal, has become a recurring feature of this administration's legal battles. A similar dynamic played out when the D.C. Circuit rebuked Judge James Boasberg and ordered an end to a contempt probe over Trump deportation flights.

A policy with a long history

Expedited removal is not new. Federal law has long authorized DHS to remove certain illegal immigrants without a full hearing before an immigration judge. But for years, the department applied that authority narrowly, limited, in practice, to individuals apprehended within 14 days of entry and within 100 miles of the border.

During Trump's first term in 2019, DHS expanded the policy to cover illegal immigrants found anywhere in the country who could not prove at least two years of continuous presence. The Biden administration rescinded that expansion. When Trump returned to office in January 2025, DHS reinstated it.

Judge Cobb's stay, issued in August 2025, blocked the reinstated policy on Fifth Amendment due process grounds. That stay held for nearly ten months, freezing a significant enforcement tool while cases moved through the courts at a pace that favored delay over resolution.

DHS General Counsel James Percival framed the ruling as vindication of a straightforward statutory reading. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Percival said:

"For years, DHS has arbitrarily limited expedited removal to 14 days even though it applies to illegal aliens who entered the country illegally within the last two years. Today, the D.C. Circuit vindicated our decision to apply the law as written. It's not too late to take a $2,600 check and a free flight home!"

That last line, a reference to a voluntary departure program offering $2,600 and a flight, captures the administration's posture: enforce the law aggressively, but leave a door open for those willing to leave on their own terms.

A broader legal momentum

Monday's ruling did not arrive in isolation. The same day, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of the Trump administration in a separate case, allowing fast-track deportations to proceed without federal court review for asylum seekers who fail the "credible fear" test. That decision overturned a Ninth Circuit ruling and upheld a 1996 immigration law limiting judicial oversight of deportation proceedings.

Taken together, the two rulings represent a substantial shift in the legal landscape for immigration enforcement. The ACLU's Anand Balakrishnan warned that the expedited removal expansion "will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system." Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in the Supreme Court case, wrote that the decision "handcuffs the judiciary's ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty."

Those objections deserve a fair hearing. But the counter-argument is equally straightforward: Congress wrote these laws. The executive branch is applying them. And courts that blocked enforcement on increasingly creative constitutional theories are now being told, by higher courts, that they overstepped.

The administration has shown it intends to press every legal advantage on immigration enforcement, including ordering sanctuary jurisdictions to stop obstructing federal agents and pushing back against judicial resistance at every level.

What happens next

The D.C. Circuit's ruling takes effect immediately, the Washington Examiner reported, even as further appeals are pursued. ICE and Customs and Border Protection can now resume expedited removals of eligible individuals encountered anywhere in the country, not just near the border.

Make the Road and its allies will almost certainly seek further review, potentially asking the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the case en banc or petitioning the Supreme Court. But given the Supreme Court's own 7-2 ruling the same day on a related deportation question, the legal terrain for challengers has narrowed considerably.

Several open questions remain. The full scope of DHS's expedited removal operations under the reinstated policy, how many individuals have been processed, how quickly, and with what error rate, is not yet publicly detailed. The specifics of the $2,600 voluntary departure program Percival referenced also remain unclear. And the identity of the third judge on the panel, beyond Walker and Wilkins, has not been specified in available reporting.

Meanwhile, the broader fight over judicial overreach in immigration cases continues. Republican lawmakers have pursued accountability for federal judges they view as obstructing lawful enforcement, including pushing to impeach an Obama-appointed judge in Atlanta over misconduct allegations.

The administration also faces ongoing judicial battles on adjacent fronts, including a looming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship that could reshape the legal framework around immigration in ways far more dramatic than expedited removal.

The bottom line

For nearly ten months, a single district judge, appointed by the president who rescinded this very policy, kept the federal government from enforcing a law Congress wrote and the executive branch chose to apply. The D.C. Circuit has now corrected that. The majority's reasoning is clean: the government must tell you what it's doing and let you respond. It does not have to hand you a legal playbook on the way out the door.

The law says illegal immigrants who entered unlawfully and cannot prove two years of continuous presence are subject to expedited removal. DHS is now free to enforce that law as written. The real question was never whether the policy was constitutional. It was how long one lower court judge could keep it on ice.