A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday overturned a ruling by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who in August 2025 had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from expanding the use of expedited removal.
Expedited removal has for nearly three decades been used to quickly return migrants apprehended at the border without a full immigration court hearing. In January 2025, DHS broadened the policy to cover non-citizens encountered anywhere in the country who could not prove they had been continuously present in the United States for at least two years.
The expansion mirrored a similar policy the Trump administration adopted in 2019 that was later rescinded under President Joe Biden.
The immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York sued over the January 2025 directive. Cobb ruled that the expansion violated migrants’ constitutional due process rights, finding that the fast-track procedure did not provide a meaningful opportunity to contest removal for people apprehended far from the border.
The D.C. Circuit disagreed. In an opinion authored by Walker, a Trump appointee, the majority said the administration was permitted “to expand expedited removal to the maximum extent allowed by Congress.”
Walker wrote that migrants are given notice that DHS is placing them in expedited removal and receive a chance to object, including by demonstrating that they have been in the country for two years. “At most, the district court’s findings show that Congress’s expedited screening system operates quickly and with practical constraints — features the statute itself contemplates,” he wrote. “They do not show that the challenged directives deprive aliens of a meaningful opportunity to be heard.”
Walker’s opinion was joined in large part by U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, also a Trump appointee.
Wilkins, an appointee of President Barack Obama, dissented. He objected to allowing migrants to be placed in expedited removal without being asked how long they have lived in the United States. Wilkins wrote that such a procedure “is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country.”
DHS General Counsel James Percival said in a statement that the ruling “vindicated our decision to apply the law as written.” Make the Road’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is one of several legal fights over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. A separate challenge to the administration’s policy of detaining immigrants without bond is pending before the Supreme Court.