If there is one thing the American immigration system has perfected over the last several decades, it is delay. Endless delay. Procedural delay. Weaponized delay. Delay so severe that a person apprehended today can be walking around with a deportation order that predates the iPhone. That is the logjam the Trump administration is now moving to smash.
On Friday, the administration will publish a Federal Register notice that fundamentally restructures how immigration appeals work, targeting the single biggest choke point in the system: the Board of Immigration Appeals. The goal is simple and long overdue—stop allowing appeals to function as a time-buying mechanism that defeats enforcement through inertia. Predictably, the move will be challenged immediately, and equally predictably, activist judges will attempt to block it. But this time, the administration appears to have done its homework.
Under the current structure, an illegal alien apprehended and ordered removed by an immigration judge can drag the process out for years, often decades, through appeals that face no real deadlines and almost no consequences for abuse. Trump’s proposed rule, RIN 1125-AB37, keeps the initial process intact: apprehension, hearing before an immigration judge, and a decision. The real change happens after that decision is made.
The centerpiece of the overhaul is the appeal deadline. Instead of 30 days to file an appeal to the BIA, the new rule cuts that window to 10 days, with limited exceptions for certain asylum cases. That is not a cosmetic change. Filing an appeal costs over $1,000 unless the alien successfully claims indigency, which itself requires documentation and scrutiny. Ten days is no longer an invitation to stall; it is a forcing mechanism. If you are serious, you move. If you are gaming the system, you don’t.
Even more consequential, appeals will no longer be automatically heard. The default will be summary dismissal unless a majority of the Board votes to take the case on the merits. In other words, appeals exist to resolve novel or significant legal questions, not to rubber-stamp delay. For the cases that do move forward, briefing is simultaneous, reply briefs are eliminated, extensions are limited, and the Board itself is placed under strict deadlines: 90 days for single-member cases and 180 days for panel cases.
That alone detonates the delay model. An appeal is no longer a strategy to disappear into the system for years. At most, it buys months—and only if the Board agrees the case is worth hearing.
The rule also strips discretionary powers from the Chief Appellate Immigration Judge that have historically been used to hold cases indefinitely while “waiting” for outside developments. That tactic—benignly described as docket management—has been one of the quiet killers of enforcement. It ends here.
And yes, there is a little trolling. The rule restores statutory language, replacing “noncitizen” with “alien” and “unaccompanied child” with “unaccompanied alien child.” Words matter, and the law says what it says.
This rule goes into effect March 6. When it does, expect a flood of injunctions, breathless media outrage, and lawfare dressed up as compassion. But unlike Trump’s first attempt, which was kneecapped by district courts before it could take effect, this version is meticulously grounded. Authority is cited. History is documented. Justifications are explicit.
