The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — not exactly known as friendly territory for this administration — just handed President Trump a major immigration enforcement win. In a 2-1 ruling issued June 23, the court reinstated the expanded expedited removal policy that lets immigration officers quickly deport illegal aliens who can't prove they've been in the country for at least two years.
This is the DC Circuit. The court where executive power goes to die. And they sided with Trump.
The policy, which the administration expanded in January 2025, had been blocked since August of that year by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who ruled it couldn't stand. The expansion broadened expedited removal from a tool used primarily at the border to one covering non-citizens apprehended anywhere in the United States — provided they couldn't demonstrate two years of continuous presence. The plaintiff in the case, an immigrant advocacy group called Make the Road New York, argued the expansion violated immigrants' rights.
The DC Circuit's three-judge panel disagreed. Judge Justin R. Walker, a Trump appointee who wrote the majority opinion, opened with a history lesson that doubled as a legal argument. "Thirty years ago, Congress created a new process for deporting illegal aliens," Walker wrote. "It is called 'expedited removal.'"
That framing matters. Walker's opinion rested on a straightforward reading: Congress built the tool, Congress defined its scope, and the administration deployed it within those boundaries. The court concluded that the expansion "did not violate immigrants' rights to expand a process to the outer limits of what is allowed under the law." In other words, the statute says you can do this, so you can do this.
Judge Neomi Rao, also a Trump appointee, joined Walker's majority. Judge Robert L. Wilkins, an Obama appointee, dissented — completing the kind of predictable ideological split that makes you wonder why we bother with oral arguments.
But the split went the right way this time, and that's what matters operationally. Expedited removal without the expansion is a border-only tool. With it, ICE officers anywhere in the country can initiate fast-track deportation proceedings against anyone who entered illegally and can't prove two years of presence. The difference between those two versions is the difference between border enforcement and interior enforcement.
The administration tried this same expansion back in 2019 during Trump's first term. It got blocked then too. The legal challenges have been running for the better part of a decade, bouncing between district courts and appellate panels while the policy sat frozen. This ruling doesn't end the litigation — Make the Road New York can appeal, and probably will — but it puts the policy back in effect while the legal process continues.
As Politico's Kyle Cheney noted in his reporting on the decision, the ruling represents a significant shift in how the DC Circuit has handled immigration enforcement cases during this administration. That's not nothing. The DC Circuit has been the graveyard for more Trump policies than any other appellate court in the country.
Congress wrote the law. The administration enforced it to the statutory limit. Two out of three judges on the most hostile circuit in America read the statute and said it's legal.
The third judge was an Obama appointee. You can fill in the rest.
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