D.C. Circuit Holds White House Shooter's Property-Destruction Conviction Was a Crime of Violence

The D.C. Circuit has affirmed the denial of a motion to vacate a firearm-during-a-crime-of-violence conviction obtained against a man who fired multiple rounds at the White House, holding that his underlying conviction for willfully and maliciously injuring a dwelling within federal jurisdiction categorically involves the use of physical force against another's property.

Tracing the statute's roots to nineteenth-century arson law and the common-law offense of malicious mischief, the Court held that injuring a dwelling requires material impairment inflicted intentionally and for a wrongful purpose, and that the Supreme Court's decisions in Johnson v. United States and Delligatti v. United States establish that intentionally causing such impairment necessarily involves the use of physical force. The Court also held the statute's historical pedigree confirms it reaches only injury to someone else's property, not one's own, satisfying the force clause's requirement that the property belong to "another."

The full text of United States v. Ortega-Hernandez can be found here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/09/24-3023-2190849.pdf

D.C. Circuit Vacates Stay of DHS Parolee Expedited Removal Policies for Lack of Standing

The D.C. Circuit has vacated a district court order staying two DHS actions that directed immigration officers to consider expedited removal for parolees, holding that immigrant-rights organizations lacked standing to seek that relief because a regulation independently authorizing the same expedited removal of parolees remained unchallenged and in full effect.

The Court held that even if the challenged memorandum and email caused an increase in expedited removals, staying only those two documents would not likely reduce the rate of expedited removal given the government's continued reliance on the separate, unchallenged regulation, so the organizations failed to show the redressability required for standing. The Court also held it had appellate jurisdiction over the stay order and that the government itself had standing to appeal despite the practical overlap in authorities.

The full text of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights v. Mullin can be found here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/08/25-5289-2187613.pdf

D.C. Circuit Vacates Stay of Expedited Removal Expansion

The D.C. Circuit has vacated a district court order staying DHS’s 2025 expansion of expedited removal. The challenged designation expanded expedited removal to the maximum statutory scope, covering unlawfully present noncitizens who cannot show at least two years of continuous presence in the United States.

The Court held that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on their due process challenge. The Court rejected any argument that government officials must advise non-citizens about the two years presence requirement or that the failure to follow the law by individual immigration officers invalidates the expansion itself. The Court therefore vacated the district court’s nationwide APA stay. The Court left open the question of what, if any, remedy exists to address an officer who issues an expedited removal order even when a non-citizen can show two years of continuous presence, recognizing that the statutory scheme governing judicial review of expedited removal orders does not permit a court to examine if the non-citizen has been present for two years.

The full text of Make the Road New York v. Mullin can be found here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/06/25-5320-2179963.pdf

D.C. Circuit Affirms Injunction Against Summary Removal Procedures Under Presidential Proclamation

The D.C. Circuit has determined that sections 1182(f) and 1185(a) do not authorize the President to remove non-citizens who are already present in the United States through summary procedures that bypass the removal procedures established by the INA. The Court affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment, holding that the Proclamation and implementing Guidance were unlawful to the extent they circumvented statutory removal procedures and prevented individuals from applying for asylum, statutory withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture.

“Statutory text, structure, and consistent Executive Branch and judicial recognition of the law’s constraints all lead to the same conclusion: Congress enacted the asylum statute, with narrow exceptions specified by statute, to grant all foreign individuals ‘physically present’ in the United States a right to apply for asylum and have their individual applications adjudicated. If the Government wishes to modify this carefully structured and intricate system, it must present those arguments to the only branch of government able to amend the INA: Congress.”

The Court also affirmed class certification as clarified by the stay panel and rejected the government’s argument that 8 USC 1252(f)(1) barred the district court’s injunctive relief or vacatur of the Guidance.

The full text of Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services v. Mullin can be found here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2026/04/25-5243-2170245.pdf

DC Circuit Permits APA Challenge to FAM Guidance to Move Forward

The Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia has issued a decision permitting a challenge to the Foreign Affairs Manual’s guidance that a visa can be denied if there is a “reason to believe” the applicant has previously made a material misrepresentation. The court found that this forward facing challenge to the FAM was not a challenge to a visa denial, and thus, was not covered by the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. “[W]e are not confident that Congress authorized a consular officer unilaterally to deem a person to have made willful misrepresentations and thereby trigger permanent ineligibility for a visa based only on an implicit ‘reason to believe’ standard – especially considering its decision to make that standard explicit for other categories of noncitizens posing elevated risks to national interests.”

The full text of Pietersen v. Department of State can be found here:

https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/05/24-5092-2118190.pdf

DC Circuit Addresses Appropriate Evidentiary Standard in Adam Walsh Act Cases

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has addressed the seemingly conflicting evidentiary standards laid out by USCIS in a 2007 memo - which requires an I-130 petitioner who has been convicted of certain crimes against children to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is not a danger to the non-citizen beneficiary - and the decision in Matter of Chawathe, which holds that petitioner must only prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the petition should be granted. “In other words, the issue before us is whether 8 U.S.C. § 1154(a)(1)(A)(viii)(I), in granting USCIS ‘sole and unreviewable discretion’ to ‘determine[] that the citizen poses no risk,’ also affords the agency discretion to depart from its own binding regulations or precedents in making this determination. We hold that it does not.”

“While Congress has granted USCIS unreviewable discretion to determine whether a citizen petitioner poses no risk to the Form I-130 beneficiary, USCIS has not provided ‘clear and convincing evidence of congressional intent to preclude judicial review’ over its decision to exert this discretion in a manner that violates its own binding regulations and published precedents. As the Supreme Court has explained, Congress may shield from judicial review an agency’s ultimate determination without precluding courts from reviewing the ‘practice[s] or procedure[s] employed in making’ such individual determinations.”

“It is possible that Chawathe does not apply in the AWA context and that, in making its preponderance-of-the-evidence standard precedential, the Department did not mean to disturb the beyond-any-reasonable doubt standard that may have already been in place for no-risk determinations under the AWA. But because the District Court did not address this possibility, and because the Government does not make this argument before us, we cannot conclude that the agency has not violated its own binding precedent. Nothing in the Act required the agency to adopt any particular standard. But if there was a standard in place, then the agency was required to follow it.”

The full text of Castaneira v. Noem can be found here: https://media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/docs/2025/05/23-5204-2118185.pdf

DC Circuit finds Lower Court has no Authority to Grant Equitable Relief

The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit found that district courts had no equitable authority to require the Department of State to issue diversity visas past the applicable statutory deadlines.

The full text of Goodluck v. Biden can be found here:

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/D1D08C51914876B585258B470051A19C/$file/21-5263.pdf

DC Circuit Dismisses Unreasonable Delay Action for EB-5 Petitioners

The DC Circuit has dismissed an unreasonable delay action brought by EB-5 petitioners, finding that absent any credible allegations that USCIS is not following their own processing rules, allowing individual litigants to “skip the line” would not do anything to systemically improve processing times.

The full text of Da Costa v. Immigration Investor Program Office can be found here: https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/1620A36CDDF5CDD985258A0F00514CE6/$file/22-5313-2013134.pdf

DC Circuit Finds US Citizen Spouse has No Constitutional Interest in Denial of Non-Citizen Spouse's Visa

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has determined that the denial of a non-citizen’s visa does not impinge on any fundamental constitutional rights held by the applicant’s U.S.-citizen spouse. The court also found that a mere statutory citation to section 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) of the INA is sufficient to meet the “facially legitimate and bona fide” standard laid out by Justice Kennedy in Kerry v. Din and to shield the visa denial from any further review in federal court under the doctrine of consular nonreviewability.

The full text of Colindres v. DOS can be found here:

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/AE00C9117C0E2443852589D7004ED982/$file/22-5009-2004709.pdf

DC Circuit Precludes Review of Adjustment Appliciations under APA

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has determined that there is no jurisdiction to review the denial of an adjustment of status application under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The full text of Abuzeid v. Mayorkas can be found here:

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/5C3B84D12B0D0E5085258975004F819B/$file/21-5003-1990563.pdf