Appeals Court Frees Trump To Fast-Track Millions Of Deportations Without A Hearing, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Years Of Living In America Still Entitled A Person To Say So In Front Of A Judge

WASHINGTON. In a ruling celebrated across the administration as a triumph of efficiency, a divided federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for the government to deport millions of people from anywhere in the country without first allowing them to appear before a judge, resolving a long-standing concern that the hours spent proving one had lived in America were hours the government could have spent removing them from it.

The 2-to-1 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revives a January 2025 policy that extends "expedited removal," a process once reserved for people caught near the border within two weeks of crossing, to the entire interior of the United States. Under the guidance, an immigrant who cannot promptly produce documents establishing more than two years of continuous residence may be removed by an officer in the field, with no hearing before an immigration judge required at any point.

A lower court had blocked the policy last August, finding that applying it to longtime residents, and potentially to U.S. citizens, risked wrongful detention and most likely violated the Constitution's guarantee of due process. The appeals panel found that the policy could proceed "to the maximum extent allowed by law," a phrase that officials within the Department of Homeland Security described as their four favorite words in the English language.

Officials stressed that the process remains scrupulously fair. A person who insists he has lived in the country longer than two years, the guidance notes, will be granted "a brief but reasonable opportunity" to prove it, a window that sources within the administration clarified would be measured against whatever paperwork the person happened to be carrying at the moment of arrest. "If you have four years of utility bills in your pocket right now, you have nothing to worry about," said one official, who added that the burden of proof had at last been placed where it belonged, on the person being detained.

The decision is expected to apply to several million residents, none of whom will be entitled to the immigration hearing that previously preceded a removal order. Advocates noted that the standard effectively requires people to carry a portable archive of their own existence at all times, a demand the administration characterized as a reasonable ask of anyone with nothing to hide. The lawsuit had been brought by Make the Road New York, which argued that the public had been kept in the dark about how the procedure was being used.

At press time, a U.S. citizen who had left his birth certificate in a drawer at home was being given a brief but reasonable opportunity to retrieve it from the back of a departing van.