Appeals Court Lets Trump Resume Fast-Track Deportations Nationwide, Reversing a Lower-Court Block

A federal appeals court has cleared the Trump administration to resume fast-track deportations of immigrants found anywhere in the country, lifting a block that had been in place since last summer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2 to 1 on Tuesday, June 23, that the government can apply expedited removal to immigrants across the United States who cannot show they have been in the country for at least two years. The decision vacated an August 2025 order by a federal district judge that had frozen the policy. Expedited removal lets immigration officers deport someone without a hearing before an immigration judge.

What the policy does

Expedited removal has existed for years. Until recently it was used mainly against people caught at or near the border shortly after crossing, or arriving by sea. The reach is set by the executive branch within limits Congress wrote into the immigration statute, which allows the process for people who have not been continuously present in the United States for two years.

On January 21, 2025, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman signed a directive reviving a 2019 designation that applies expedited removal to the full extent the statute allows. The practical effect is that an immigration officer who encounters someone in the interior of the country, not just near the border, can order that person removed within days unless the person can show two years of continuous presence. The government has described expedited removal as central to its deportation operations.

How the case reached the appeals court

Make the Road New York, an immigrant rights group, sued the day after the Huffman directive was issued. In its complaint the group argued the expanded policy handed the president, in its words, "a cheat code to circumvent due process and the Constitution."

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, granted a stay in August 2025. She found the policy likely violated the due process rights of affected immigrants, who she said had a significant interest in remaining in the country and faced a substantial risk of being wrongly deported. That stay is what the appeals court lifted this week.

The majority

Judge Justin Walker, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote the opinion. He concluded that Make the Road New York had not shown the policy itself denies immigrants notice and a chance to respond.

"There is no evidence that the designation or Huffman memorandum secretly restricts the right to notice and an opportunity to respond," Walker wrote, adding that "a directive's silence cannot command, authorize or structurally ensure a constitutional violation."

Walker also said Cobb had applied the wrong legal test. She weighed the policy under the standard from the 1976 Supreme Court case Mathews v. Eldridge. Walker wrote that the correct measure, even assuming the immigrants have due process rights, is the less demanding standard from the 1950 case Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank and Trust, which asks whether a notice is "reasonably calculated" to inform a person and give them a chance to object. He pointed to two recent Supreme Court orders in Trump v. J.G.G. and A.A.R.P. v. Trump, where the justices applied that standard in deportation disputes.

The record in the case included immigrants who had lived in the United States for more than two years but were still placed in expedited removal. Walker acknowledged those cases. He attributed them to "individual officers' failure to follow the law" rather than to the written policy. If someone was denied a chance to prove continuous presence, he wrote, "that's illegal," but the cause would be the officer, not the directive.

Judge Neomi Rao, also a Trump appointee, joined Walker and wrote separately. She argued the lawsuit should have been dismissed outright, because Congress left expedited removal to the discretion of the executive branch and, in her view, courts cannot review those decisions.

The dissent

Judge Robert Wilkins, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented. He wrote that Make the Road New York was entitled to keep the stay because it had shown the policy violates due process.

Wilkins pointed to the same wrongful removals the majority set aside. The fact that people had already been deported despite years of continuous presence, he wrote, shows the government's procedures do not give immigrants a real chance to contest removal. Officers are not required to ask a person when they entered the country or to tell them that expedited removal applies only to those present less than two years. A process like that, Wilkins wrote, "might satisfy due process for persons encountered at the border, but it is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country."

Reaction

Anand Balakrishnan, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, argued the case for the plaintiffs. He said in a statement that the ruling "undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them," and that the policy "will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system."

The Justice Department had urged the court to lift the block. In an October court filing, department lawyers called Cobb's stay an "egregious error" that deprived the administration of an "essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years."

What happens next

The stay is gone, so the administration can enforce the expanded policy while the case continues. Make the Road New York can ask the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the case or take the dispute to the Supreme Court. Neither step had been announced as of Friday.