For years, the Department of Homeland Security limited expedited removal to people caught within 14 days of crossing the border. The statute Congress actually wrote covers anyone who entered illegally within the last two years and can't prove otherwise. On Tuesday, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the Trump administration can finally enforce what the law already says.
That gap — 14 days versus two years — is the difference between a speed bump and an expressway.
The ruling means federal immigration agents can now deport individuals found anywhere in the interior of the country — not just at the border — without those individuals first proving they've been here continuously for more than two years. The burden falls on the person facing removal, not on the government. That's not a new invention. That's the statute Congress passed. The Trump administration just stopped pretending it didn't exist.
The case landed before a three-judge panel: two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee. Judge Justin R. Walker, writing for the majority, noted that the executive branch had possessed this authority all along but simply chose not to use it. "For many years, while some were designated, others were not," Walker wrote. "But that changed in January 2025 when the executive expanded expedited removal to the maximum extent allowed by Congress."
DHS General Counsel James Percival didn't exactly mince words after the decision came down. "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," Percival said. "Today, the DC Circuit vindicated our decision to apply the law as written." He then added a kicker that probably didn't go over well in certain advocacy circles: "It's not too late to take a $2,600 check and a free flight home!"
The lone dissenter, Obama-appointed Judge Robert L. Wilkins, argued the expanded policy raised due process concerns for people encountered away from the border. "A procedure that can result in persons being deported pursuant to the expedited removal statute without even being asked how long they have been in the country might satisfy due process for persons encountered at the border," Wilkins wrote, "but it is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country."
It's a reasonable-sounding objection until you remember what expedited removal actually requires. The person facing removal gets the chance to demonstrate they've been in the country for more than two years. If they can, they get a hearing. If they can't — or won't — the process moves forward. The dissent treats the absence of an automatic full hearing as a constitutional crisis. The majority treats it as Congress writing a law and the executive branch finally following it.
The broader context matters here. A lower court had blocked the policy back in August, and the administration appealed. Immigration advocacy groups framed the original injunction as a victory for due process. What they were actually celebrating was the continuation of an enforcement gap that let millions of people who entered illegally avoid any meaningful removal proceeding by simply being far enough from the border. The DC Circuit just closed that gap.
The practical effect is enormous. The administration can now scale deportation operations without routing every case through an immigration court system that was already drowning in backlog. Expedited removal is faster, cheaper, and doesn't require the kind of prolonged legal process that immigration attorneys have spent decades using to delay enforcement into irrelevance.
The statute was always there. The authority was always there. One administration after another just chose to read the 14-day limit as if Congress had written it in, when Congress hadn't. Now a federal appeals court has confirmed what the plain text says.
Sometimes the law works exactly the way it was designed to. It just needs someone willing to use it.
