The Trump administration scored major immigration victories in district court, circuit court and the Supreme Court this week, winning rulings that make it easier to deport migrants — and to do so faster.
The federal appeals court in the District of Columbia led the way with a ruling Tuesday backing the Department of Homeland Security’s expansion of expedited removal, a speedy deportation that can be carried out by immigration officials within hours or days.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that President Trump was likely on firm legal footing when he expanded expedited removal to cover the entire country, not just U.S. land borders and ports of entry.
The result is that illegal immigrants living in the country’s interior, who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. more than two years, do not have an automatic right to a deportation hearing before an immigration judge.
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, said immigration law allows the government leeway to leave legal immigrants in limbo if they depart the U.S. and then return while facing unresolved criminal charges.
Rather than admitting them, the government can “parole” them, the justices ruled. That makes it easier to deport them if they are eventually convicted of a serious crime.
A federal district judge in Texas approved an agreement Monday that rescinds a Biden-era policy that allowed immigration judges to delay rulings in hundreds of thousands of deportation cases, effectively allowing those migrants to remain in the U.S. indefinitely without resolving their legal status.
The consent decree nullifies the Biden policy and bars future administrations from reviving it.
The D.C. Circuit’s ruling on expedited removal is the most wide-ranging of the new decisions.
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee who wrote the court’s key opinion, said that although past administrations were more circumspect in their use of expedited removal, the law grants the deportation tool vast reach — and the Trump administration is fully flexing it.
“Here, the directives are not unlawful,” he wrote.
Expedited removal is one of a series of overlapping controls the Trump administration has established to seal off the southwestern border. It allows immigration officers to deport people without having to go before immigration judges.
Under the law, expedited removal can be used only on illegal immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. for at least two years.
Previous administrations restricted expedited removal to people who arrived in the U.S. by certain means, such as boats, or in certain places, such as those caught within 100 miles of a border.
Early in Mr. Trump’s second term, however, the Homeland Security Department erased the 100-mile limit, and the court said Tuesday that the action was lawful.
Should the ruling be finalized, it could dramatically expand the number of illegal immigrants who could face expedited removal.
Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, dissented, saying that without more due process checks, people will wrongly be swept up in deportations.
“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, but it is woefully inadequate for persons encountered in the interior of the country,” he wrote.
In the case before the Supreme Court, the justices ruled 6-3 that legal immigrants facing criminal charges who leave the U.S. and then return can be left in a legal limbo known as “parole” upon their return.
It is easier to deport someone who has not been formally admitted to the U.S., so the government has an incentive to use parole.
The case involved Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese citizen who held legal permanent resident status in the U.S. but faced unresolved criminal charges when he left. He then returned to America but said the government abused its power when it paroled him on his return.
Mr. Lau said border officers had an obligation to make a full determination of his admissibility, and they were wrong to place him on parole, delaying the decision until his criminal case was concluded.
He also argued that because he had not been convicted at the time of his return, border officers were required not just to make a decision but also to decide in his favor. He was later convicted.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said immigration law did allow border officers to use parole.
“We conclude that the government properly charged Lau with inadmissibility. Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” he wrote.
The law applies to those who have “committed” a serious crime.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, led the dissent, arguing the decision will place some green card holders “into a state of uncertainty” about their legal status.
She said the government should have to prove that migrants committed a crime at the time of their reentry into the U.S. She said it seemed backward to allow the government to deny full admission and defer the decision about the crime to later.
“I worry that the court has now handed the government a massive blank check,” Justice Jackson wrote in an opinion joined by the court’s other two Democratic appointees.
In the consent decree case, the Trump administration adopted what is known as sue-and-settle, a tactic in which outside groups sue a sympathetic government to reverse a policy of a previous administration.
It has long been used by environmentalists and Democratic administrations to cement their policy agendas before leaving office, but the Trump administration has been using it to reverse Biden-era immigration changes.
In the case this week, Texas sued to erase what was known as the Administrative Closure Rule, which then-Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in 2024. The rule directed judges to reassign deportation cases to less active dockets.
Mr. Garland said it allowed judges to focus on more pressing cases. Critics, though, said it allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to avoid the deportation proceedings that should have resolved their cases.
Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee in Texas, approved the consent decree Monday, just hours after Texas and the Justice Department filed it.
“Defendants, as well as their successors, agents, subordinate agencies and employees, are permanently enjoined from promulgating regulations that permit immigration judges the authority to administratively close removal proceedings without reaching the merits of a case absent an express statutory basis to do so,” the judge wrote.
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