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A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with an effort to expand fast-track deportations throughout the U.S., in a legal win for the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
The 2-1 decision by a panel of judges at the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia Circuit allows the Department of Homeland Security to carry out an expansion of the expedited removal process, which empowers federal immigration officials to deport some detainees without court hearings.
Before the second Trump administration, the expedited removal policy was limited to areas close to the border and only applied to recent entrants who could not prove they had been living in the country for more than two weeks.
But the policy allowed to take effect Tuesday — which was drafted in the first week of President Trump’s second term in January 2025 — expands expedited removal to anywhere in the United States. Officials can use it on any unauthorized immigrant who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than two years.
In August 2025, a federal judge found the Trump administration’s expansion of expedited removal violated due process rights, following a lawsuit from immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York. The panel of appellate judges disagreed Tuesday, invalidating her order.
The two appellate judges in the majority — Trump-appointed Justin Walker and Neomi Rao — found the policy offers sufficient due process protections.
“Make the Road has not shown that the expedited-removal process denies its members notice and an opportunity to be heard,” they wrote.
Last August, a lower court judge called the government’s procedures for ensuring people aren’t accidentally subjected to expedited removal “woefully inadequate,” writing that migrants were not even informed of the fact that being in the country for at least two years is a possible defense. On Tuesday, the appellate court pushed back, finding that standard “would require immigration officers to provide what amounts to legal advice.”
Obama-appointed Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins dissented from the core of the ruling, arguing the policy deprives people of due process rights. In part, he wrote that the policy doesn’t require immigration officials to ask migrants how long they have been in the country, or inform them of the two-year rule.
“Absent such knowledge, the noncitizen is simply left to hope that the immigration officer will conclude that they have met their burden of demonstrating two-years of continuous presence at the initial screening interview,” Wilkins wrote.
James Percival, the top lawyer at DHS, said Tuesday’s order “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!,” Percival added, referring to the Trump administration’s incentives to push people in the U.S. illegally to self-deport.
The expansion of expedited removal is part of a series of Trump administration policies designed to surge deportations by speeding up the process. Last week, the government hired its largest-ever class of immigration judges, onboarding dozens of judges after pushing out more than 100, some of whom allege they were fired for not backing mass deportations.
The administration has also sought to hold large numbers of immigration detainees without bond hearings, drawing scores of legal challenges. And early last year, the government used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly deport hundreds of Venezuelan men accused of belonging to the gang Tren De Aragua, drawing due process concerns.
