The Trump administration can once again use fast-track deportations against undocumented migrants anywhere in the country after a federal appeals court on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, cleared the way for the policy to resume.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside a lower-court order that had temporarily halted President Donald Trump’s broader use of expedited removal. The administration has treated the policy expansion as an important part of its mass deportation agenda. The ruling means federal immigration authorities can, for now, move forward with the nationwide version of the policy while litigation continues.
Expedited removal allows the government to deport people quickly without giving them an opportunity to appear before an immigration judge. Until recently, that process was generally used for migrants arriving by sea or those detained at or near the border soon after entering the country.
Trump broadened the policy in January 2025 to cover undocumented migrants across the United States. After that change, immigration agents began taking migrants from courthouses where they had appeared for immigration matters and deporting them within days. The administration said the expansion would let it more efficiently remove people who could not prove they had been in the country continuously for at least two years.
Anand Balakrishnan, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project who argued for the challengers before the appeals panel, criticized the ruling. In a statement, he said, “The Trump administration’s push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system,” and added that the decision “undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them.”
Judge Justin R. Walker, writing for the majority, said the challengers failed to show that the broader use of expedited removal violates due process. He wrote that migrants receive notice of the removal action and an opportunity to answer it. Walker also said the government was not required to tell migrants that they could avoid expedited removal by demonstrating they had been in the United States for more than two years.
“The constitutional requirement is notice of the action the government is taking and the grounds for it, plus an opportunity to respond,” Walker wrote, adding that the plaintiffs’ “contrary reasoning would require immigration officers to provide what amounts to legal advice.”
Walker and Judge Neomi Rao formed the majority; both were appointed by Trump. The panel’s third member, Judge Robert L. Wilkins, appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented.
The appellate ruling nullified an order issued by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, who in August 2025 concluded that the administration had not created adequate safeguards to prevent migrants from being mistakenly deported through the accelerated process. Cobb said the plaintiffs had presented “substantial evidence” that using expedited removal more broadly created a high risk of error, including cases involving people who had lived in the United States well beyond two years but were still placed into expedited proceedings.
Walker acknowledged that the record included examples of mistakes, but he said those problems stemmed from “individual officers’ failure to follow the law — not defects in the written directives under review or the procedures they incorporate.”
The administration has maintained that its expanded policy contains protections against arbitrary removals. In an October 2025 court filing, Justice Department lawyers called Cobb’s decision an “egregious error” and argued that it deprived the government of an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and to efficiently deport potentially millions of people.