A federal appellate court handed the Trump administration a win on Tuesday in its bid to fast-track the deportation of paroled foreign nationals brought in the United States by former President Biden.
In its per curiam ruling, a three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court blockade against the Department of Homeland Security’s directives suggesting officials use expedited removal to speedily deport migrants. The decision throws out an August 2025 ruling by Biden-appointed District Judge Jia Cobb, who claimed that the migrants “played by the rules” and the federal government subsequently “changed the game.”
The D.C. Circuit panel was comprised of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, an Obama appointee, and Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, both Trump appointees.
According to The Washington Times, paroling foreign nationals into the country “became a loophole to the usual border controls” under the Biden administration. The Democrat president reportedly allowed in “Afghans, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Ukrainians and Venezuelans who flew into the U.S., plus a large swath of other migrants who reached the U.S.-Mexico border and preregistered their arrival.”
A former immigration judge told the outlet that the prior administration paroled an estimated 2.9 million migrants during its four years in power.
In its Tuesday decision, the D.C. Circuit held that the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration over its bid to expeditiously remove the migrants lacked standing to challenge the government’s directives. There were no noted dissents.
“Plaintiffs cannot seek relief that changes nothing for them. The plaintiffs here tried to do just that. So we vacate the stay issued by the district court,” the court ruled.
DHS General Counsel James Percival hailed the appellate court’s ruling as a “big win” on X. Linking to an agency webpage that helps facilitate voluntary deportations, he added, “It’s not too late to take a $2,600 check and a free flight home!”
Tuesday’s ruling is the latest legal win for the Trump administration in its bid to remove foreign nationals from the United States.
In June, the D.C. Circuit overturned a separate injunction by Cobb that attempted to block the government’s bid to expand the expedited removal process to increase the deportation of illegal aliens throughout the country. That decision came days before the Supreme Court sided with the administration in its efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of noncitizens registered under the program.
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