The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed the Trump administration a major immigration enforcement victory Monday, vacating a lower court order that had blocked the government's nationwide expedited removal policy. The 2-1 ruling clears the Department of Homeland Security to resume fast-track deportations of illegal immigrants found anywhere in the country, provided they were not lawfully admitted and cannot prove they have lived here continuously for at least two years.
The decision reverses a nationwide stay imposed by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, who had concluded the policy created a significant risk that individuals could be wrongly deported before getting a meaningful chance to prove they were exempt. The appeals court disagreed, finding that challengers were unlikely to succeed on their claims that the expansion violates constitutional due process protections.
For the Trump administration, the ruling restores a policy pillar first erected in 2019 during Trump's first term, rescinded under the Biden administration, and reinstated shortly after Trump returned to office in January 2025. For the legal left, it marks another courtroom setback in a string of failed attempts to use district-level injunctions to freeze federal immigration enforcement.
Judge Justin Walker wrote for the majority. His opinion drew a sharp line between what due process requires and what the challengers, the organization Make the Road, demanded it require. The Constitution, Walker wrote, obligates the government to tell an illegal immigrant what action it is taking and on what grounds, and to give that person a chance to respond. It does not require immigration officers to walk detainees through every possible legal defense.
As Fox News Digital reported, Walker addressed the challengers' argument that DHS must proactively inform individuals of the two-year continuous-presence exemption:
"If due process requires the government to inform individuals of the two-year continuous-presence rule, it presumably also requires informing them of every other basis for contesting expedited removal. Make the Road offers no limiting principle and identifies no authority for so expansive a requirement."
That reasoning matters. Make the Road's position, taken to its logical end, would have required federal officers to serve as de facto defense counsel during enforcement actions, a standard with no basis in existing law and no workable limit.
Walker also acknowledged that the record contained evidence of some individuals being erroneously subjected to expedited removal despite having lived in the country for more than two years. But he distinguished between individual officer mistakes and systemic policy defects. The majority opinion stated plainly that wrongful removals in those cases would be "illegal," but that the cause would be "individual officers' failure to follow the law, not defects in the written directives under review."
That distinction is legally significant. It means the policy itself survives scrutiny even if enforcement errors occur on the ground, a standard that applies across virtually every area of federal law enforcement.
Judge Robert Wilkins dissented, arguing that DHS procedures "do not allow a meaningful opportunity for noncitizens to demonstrate that they have been continuously present in the United States for two years." It is the kind of argument that sounds reasonable in a law review article but runs headlong into the practical realities of immigration enforcement. The majority's response, that the Constitution does not require the government to coach individuals through every available defense, is the more grounded reading.
The pattern here has become familiar. A Biden-appointed district judge issues a sweeping nationwide order freezing a Trump immigration policy. The administration appeals. And a higher court reverses, often finding that the lower court overstepped. It happened again here, and it has happened in other recent cases involving the same dynamic, district judges appointed by Democratic presidents reaching for the broadest possible injunction, only to be reined in on appeal.
Expedited removal allows DHS to quickly deport certain illegal immigrants without a full hearing before an immigration judge. Under statute, it applies to individuals who were not lawfully admitted or paroled into the United States and who cannot demonstrate continuous physical presence in the country for at least two years.
For years, DHS limited the policy's application to individuals apprehended within 14 days of entry and within 100 miles of the border, a self-imposed restriction far narrower than the statute allowed. The Trump administration first expanded the policy to its full statutory scope in 2019. The Biden administration later rescinded that expansion. When Trump returned to office in January 2025, DHS reinstated it.
Walker's majority opinion noted that DHS "thereby exercised its discretion to apply its expedited-removal authority to the maximum extent allowed by law." In other words, the administration did not invent a new power. It used one Congress already granted, the same one the Biden administration chose to leave on the shelf.
The Fifth Circuit's decision to lift an injunction on a Texas immigration enforcement law earlier reflected a similar judicial recognition: that elected officials and their agencies have broad authority to enforce immigration statutes as written, and that courts should not lightly substitute their own policy preferences for statutory text.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not hold back in a statement to Fox News Digital after the ruling:
"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!"
The reference to a $2,600 check and a free flight home appears to describe a voluntary departure incentive, a detail Percival offered without elaboration. The broader point was clear enough: the government considers the legal question settled and is pressing ahead.
Percival's framing, "apply the law as written", is worth pausing on. The entire legal fight over expedited removal has never been about whether the statute authorizes what the Trump administration is doing. It does. The fight has been about whether courts should layer additional procedural requirements on top of the statute in the name of due process. The D.C. Circuit said no.
This ruling fits a pattern that conservative legal observers have tracked for years. District judges, often in friendly jurisdictions, issue nationwide injunctions that freeze executive branch policy. The injunctions generate headlines and delay enforcement. Then appellate courts, sometimes months later, reverse them. By then, the damage is done: months of enforcement paralysis, resources diverted to litigation, and a signal sent to illegal immigrants that the system can be gamed through the courts.
The composition of the federal bench matters enormously in these fights. Trump's ongoing effort to fill vacancies on the nation's most active federal appeals courts is not an abstract exercise in judicial philosophy. It has direct, measurable consequences for whether duly enacted laws can be enforced or whether they sit frozen under a district judge's order while the country waits.
The Supreme Court still has major opinions pending this term that could further define the boundaries of executive enforcement authority. But the D.C. Circuit's ruling Monday is a concrete win now, not a promise of one later.
The ruling does not end the litigation entirely. The full case name and docket number were not specified in available reporting, and it remains unclear whether Make the Road or other challengers will seek rehearing en banc or petition the Supreme Court. The identity of the third judge on the panel, beyond Walker and Wilkins, was also not disclosed.
Nor is it clear how quickly DHS will operationalize the reinstated policy at scale. Expedited removal requires trained officers, processing capacity, and coordination across field offices. The legal green light is necessary but not sufficient.
Still, the trajectory is unmistakable. Courts are increasingly unwilling to let single district judges dictate national immigration policy from the bench. The Supreme Court's recent willingness to reverse lower courts in other contexts reinforces the same principle: higher courts expect legal reasoning, not policy activism, from the judges below them.
Judge Cobb blocked a policy that Congress authorized and the executive branch chose to enforce. The D.C. Circuit unblocked it. The law hasn't changed. The only thing that changed was the judge.
