It took that long when Trump expanded expedited removal in June 2019. Trump expanded expedited removal which got stopped by a judge. The appeal was successful, but it finished in Oct 2021 - almost a year and a half later. That was toward the end of his first term, so he only managed to deport 17 people with expedited removal. Basically the courts ran out the clock on him.
Trump has already had a half a year in office. This appeal will probably take a year and a half. So that is about half his term where deportations are basically going to be halted to a crawl.
And no the judge's decision did not give any wiggle room. They have to stop all expedited removals for this criteria ASAP.
But this judge already acknowledges expedited removal is constitutional in her statements with the decision.
"Cobb, who was appointed President Joe Biden, said she was not questioning the constitutionality of the expedited removal statute and its “long-standing application” in border control."
The fact that it’s already been through the system recently and Trump won means more than likely it won’t take the same amount of time. Since precedent(and law) now is on his side as a result of that near two year delay.
They won’t spend two years debating what they already did for two years a few years ago.
It also likely means that any “pending review” will be accompanied by a stay of the judges ruling allowing the admins policy to continue. But I doubt it gets that far, because as you acknowledge. They already spent two years on this and Trump won. What justified revisiting it? Enforcement? lol
Also a major difference now from then, is nationwide injunctions have mostly been struck down.
This isn’t the first attempt by activist judges in this term to slow deportations. A lot of them doing the same thing that helped “run out the clock” before but are being stayed indefinitely upon further review if not flat out struck down now.
Let’s say, on immigration policy..Trump 1.0 crawled so Trump 2.0 can run.
The novel approach used by Trump that wasn’t cleared out by his first term, which was the Alien Enemies Act, is the one being tied up for maybe years. The rest would require a massive change of heart by SCOTUS to be allowed to hold up anything for any significant time.
Theres a reason the left has been suspiciously muted on this ruling. I think they know it’s not going to stand as much as we do.
These other things like expedited removals are already settled with no real new wrinkles to justify new debate and judgements outside of volume.