A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume a nationwide expansion of expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process that can remove certain noncitizens from the United States without the full immigration-court proceedings typically used in contested deportation cases.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 on June 23 to vacate a lower-court stay that had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from enforcing its January 2025 policy. The ruling gives DHS authority to apply expedited removal to qualifying immigrants arrested anywhere in the country, not only those apprehended at or near the border shortly after arrival.

The case, Make the Road New York v. Mullin, centers on a DHS designation issued shortly after President Donald Trump returned to office. The designation expanded expedited removal to the maximum reach allowed by federal statute for certain noncitizens who were not admitted or paroled, are inadmissible because of documentation or fraud-related grounds, and cannot affirmatively show two years of continuous physical presence in the United States.

Expedited removal has existed for nearly three decades and has historically been used most often at ports of entry, against migrants arriving by sea, or against people caught near the border soon after crossing. The 2025 policy moved the program into the interior of the country, making it available against a broader group of immigrants who encounter federal agents away from border zones.

Judge Justin Walker, writing for the court, said Make the Road New York had not shown that the challenged DHS directives deprived its members of constitutionally required notice and an opportunity to be heard. The opinion said the process informs an individual that they are being placed in expedited-removal proceedings and permits them to respond, including by contesting the applicability of expedited removal.

“Make the Road has not shown that the expedited-removal process denies its members notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Walker wrote in the opinion. He also said the plaintiffs had not identified authority requiring the government to proactively instruct immigrants on every possible defense or exemption, including the two-year continuous-presence rule.

The ruling turned in part on the distinction between the legality of DHS’s written policy and alleged errors in implementation. The court acknowledged that the record contained evidence that some people may have been wrongly placed in expedited removal despite living in the country for more than two years. But Walker concluded that such examples, if unlawful, reflected individual officers’ failure to follow the law rather than a facial defect in the DHS designation or implementing memorandum.

The decision reverses a stay entered in August 2025 by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of the District of Columbia. Cobb had concluded that Make the Road New York was likely to succeed on its due-process claim and that the expanded policy created substantial risk of erroneous removals, particularly for people encountered in the interior of the country who may have documents, family ties, or legal claims that are difficult to present quickly while detained.

The appeals court disagreed with that due-process analysis. Walker said Congress created an expedited system that operates quickly and with practical limits, and that those features alone did not prove a constitutional violation. He wrote that the challenged directives did not secretly restrict notice, bar immigrants from raising continuous presence, or prevent people who express fear of persecution from being routed into the credible-fear process required by law.

Judge Neomi Rao joined major parts of Walker’s opinion and concurred separately. Rao said the lawsuit should have failed at the threshold because Congress assigned expedited-removal designation decisions to the executive branch and sharply limited judicial review. Even so, she agreed that the policy was consistent with due process and that the lower-court stay should be vacated.

Judge Robert Wilkins concurred in part and dissented in part. He objected to allowing migrants inside the country to be placed in expedited removal without procedures that more clearly ask how long they have lived in the United States. Reuters reported that Wilkins called the procedure “woefully inadequate” for people encountered in the interior of the country.

The Department of Homeland Security welcomed the ruling. James Percival, DHS’s general counsel, said in a statement cited by Reuters that the decision “vindicated our decision to apply the law as written.” The administration has argued in court filings that the expanded policy is an essential enforcement tool and that the lower-court stay improperly interfered with federal immigration operations.

Immigrant-rights advocates sharply criticized the decision. Anand Balakrishnan, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and counsel for Make the Road New York, said the policy would subject people to an “unfair and error-prone system” and that the ruling undermined due-process protections when the government seeks to deport someone. The ACLU said it was evaluating next steps in the litigation.

The practical effect of the decision is significant. In ordinary removal proceedings, noncitizens generally appear before an immigration judge and may raise applications for relief or protection, depending on their circumstances. Expedited removal compresses that process. If an immigration officer determines the person is subject to expedited removal and no exception or protection process applies, the person can be removed without a full hearing before an immigration judge.

Still, the ruling does not eliminate all limits on DHS. The statute excludes people who were admitted or paroled into the United States and those who can prove at least two years of continuous physical presence. People who express fear of persecution or torture, or state an intent to seek asylum, must be referred for a credible-fear screening process. The court’s decision also does not decide every possible challenge to how expedited removal is applied in an individual case.

The decision lands amid a wider set of legal fights over the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, including courthouse arrests, sanctuary policies, detention practices and the scope of federal authority over removal procedures. It also reflects the D.C. Circuit’s continuing role in expedited-removal litigation because federal law channels certain systemic challenges to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

For now, the appeals court’s ruling removes the nationwide stay that had prevented DHS from enforcing the 2025 expansion. Unless further court action changes the posture, immigration authorities may again use expedited removal against eligible people encountered throughout the United States who cannot establish the statutory protections that place them outside the fast-track process.