Someone with a removal order has few routes back, and one of the main ones is asking to reopen the case, the motion to reopen. It is the request you make when a new fact or new evidence appears, which did not exist or was not available before. On 18 August 2026, the administrative immigration appeals body, the Board of Immigration Appeals, tightened that route.
Deciding Matter of M-M-L-J-, 29 I&N Dec. 843 (BIA 2026), the body held that you may ask to reopen only once, whether before the immigration judge or before the body itself, and that a justified delay does not restore that chance. In the case decided, the person was on a fourth request, and it was refused for exceeding the limit.
The two limits on a request to reopen
Section 240(c)(7) of the immigration statute imposes two limits on the request. One is a limit of number: you may make only one. The other is a limit of time: ninety days from the final decision.
The statute itself opens a narrow exception, for victims of domestic violence covered by special rules. And there is another exception, this one in the regulation rather than the statute: a request based on changed conditions in your country of origin, in asylum matters, is free of both limits.
What was in dispute
The federal courts had already been accepting that the ninety-day period may be paused where the person was diligent but was prevented from acting by an extraordinary circumstance. This is what is called equitable tolling, the pausing of a deadline for a just cause.
The open question was whether the same reasoning would apply to the limit of number. If a deadline can be paused for a just cause, could the count of requests be too? Some courts had already answered no, with a simple argument: a deadline runs, and so can be paused; a limit of number does not run, it merely counts.
What the body decided
The body took that second line. It said it was persuaded by the Fifth Circuit's analysis and concluded that the text of the statute and Congress's intention to restrict these requests rule out pausing the limit of number for a just cause. Apart from the exception the statute provides, a second request, and any after it, are not admitted, even where the person shows diligence and an extraordinary circumstance.
Where this decision applies, and where it does not
This is where a hasty reading goes wrong, and it is what decides whether the news reaches you. The United States is divided into judicial regions called circuits, each with its own federal court of appeals. What the immigration body decides applies in the circuits that have not yet ruled on the question. Where a circuit has already ruled, its view prevails.
The two doors that remain open
The decision expressly preserves two routes, and they are worth knowing. The first is reopening on the adjudicator's own initiative, called sua sponte: both the immigration judge and the body retain their own authority to reopen a case at any time. The body took care to record that this authority is separate and is not confused with the limit of number.
The second is the request based on changed conditions in your country of origin, in asylum matters, which the regulation exempts from both limits. On that one, however, the body noted that it was not deciding whether the limit of number reaches it, because the request in that case did not concern the subject.
What to do with this information
Sources
- Board of Immigration Appeals, Matter of M-M-L-J-, 29 I&N Dec. 843 (BIA 2026), decided 18 August 2026, available in the EOIR repository at justice.gov/eoir.
- Immigration statute, section 240(c)(7), 8 U.S.C. § 1229a(c)(7), which sets the limit of number in subparagraph (A), the ninety-day period in subparagraph (C)(i) and the domestic violence exception in subparagraph (C)(iv).
- 8 C.F.R. § 1003.2(c)(3)(ii), which exempts from both limits a request based on changed conditions in the country of origin, in asylum matters.
Updated 29 August 2026. The reach of the decision varies by region of the country, and the question may return to the federal courts.