For ten months, a single district court judge kept the federal government from enforcing a deportation process that Congress created in 1996. A process that had been on the books for three decades. A process that literally says the government can remove people who entered the country illegally without dragging everyone through immigration court first.
On Monday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said that was enough of that.
In a 2-1 ruling in Make the Road New York v. Noem (No. 25-5320), Judges Justin Walker and Neomi Rao reversed the lower court stay that had blocked President Trump's expanded expedited removal program since August 2025. The program, authorized by a Trump directive issued in January 2025, extended expedited removal from its original scope — within 100 miles of the border and 14 days of entry — to apply nationwide against anyone who cannot prove they've been continuously present in the United States for two years.
Judge Walker, writing for the majority, held that the administration was operating "to the maximum extent allowed by Congress." Which is a polite, judicial way of saying the law already permits this and nobody bothered to use it.
The original framework was narrow by design — or, more accurately, narrow by political cowardice. For decades, expedited removal applied only to people caught near the border shortly after crossing. Congress wrote the statute to allow much broader application. Previous administrations just chose not to pull the trigger. Trump pulled it.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb had stayed the policy, and for ten months the expanded program sat frozen while illegal aliens who would have been removed within hours instead remained in the country. DHS General Counsel James Percival said the ruling "vindicated our decision to apply the law as written." A novel concept in Washington — reading the statute and doing what it says.
The ACLU, which represented the plaintiff organization Make the Road New York, called expedited removal "an unfair and error-prone system" that undermines due process. Lead counsel Anand Balakrishnan framed the process as stripping people of their rights.
Here's what the process actually strips: the ability to disappear into the interior for years while waiting for an immigration court date that may never come. Expedited removal means a DHS officer evaluates whether someone is in the country illegally and, if so, removes them — sometimes within hours — without routing through the backlogged immigration court system.
Judge Robert Wilkins dissented, arguing the program "does not even require officers to ask how long someone has lived in the United States." That's a procedural objection, and it's worth noting. But the majority found that statutory authority granted by Congress in 1996 doesn't come with a requirement to slow-walk enforcement just because the scope makes critics uncomfortable.
As Newsmax reported, this ruling clears the most significant legal roadblock the administration faced on expedited removal. The D.C. Circuit — the court that handles most challenges to federal agency action — has now said the executive branch can use the tools Congress gave it.
Thirty years. The authority sat there for thirty years. Congress wrote it, presidents ignored it, and when someone finally used it, the ACLU ran to court to argue the law Congress passed was unconstitutional.
The 2-1 split means this likely isn't over. But for now, the law as written is the law as enforced. Apparently that still counts for something.