The BIA appeal deadline is 30 days, in every case

If an immigration judge denied your case, you have 30 calendar days to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals (the BIA, or "the Board"). That is true in asylum cases and in every other kind of case. There is no 10-day deadline.

For a short time in 2026 a new rule said most appeals would have only 10 days. That part of the rule never took effect. The trouble is that the official online version of the regulation still prints the old text, so anyone who looks it up can get the wrong answer.

What happened to the 10-day rule

In 2026 the Justice Department issued an interim final rule that rewrote the Board's appeal procedures. Among other things, it cut the general deadline to appeal an immigration judge's decision from 30 days to 10 days. Asylum cases kept 30 days under a separate paragraph of the rule.

The rule was challenged in federal court. On March 8, 2026, the day before the rule would have taken effect, the federal district court in Washington, D.C. vacated the 10-day rule in Amica Ctr. for Immigrant Rights v. EOIR, No. 1:26-cv-00696-RDM (D.D.C.), 2026 WL 662494.

Vacating a rule means the court sets it aside. The earlier text of the regulation comes back in its place. So asylum cases keep 30 days through the part of the rule that survived, and every other case gets 30 days because the old text was revived.

The government filed an appeal to the D.C. Circuit (No. 26-5156). On August 17, 2026, it dismissed that appeal by agreement. The court's order is now final.

The immigration court system itself agrees. Policy Memorandum OOD PM 26-02, effective March 13, 2026, tells judges that "no IJ should be informing either party that the appellate deadline for the Board is only 10 days." The EOIR Policy Manual, Part III, Chapter 3.5(a), states the 30-day deadline.

How the 30 days are counted

Two rules decide whether an appeal is on time.

• When the clock starts. If the judge decides your case out loud at the end of the hearing, the 30 days run from that oral decision. If the judge issues a written decision, they run from the date it is mailed or sent electronically.
• When the appeal counts as filed. Under 8 C.F.R. 1003.38(c), an appeal is filed when the Board receives it. The day you mail it does not count. An appeal that arrives on day 31 is late.

In practice, treat the deadline as earlier than day 30. Leave time for the appeal to arrive, and for anything that goes wrong along the way.

The form and the fee

An appeal from an immigration judge's decision is filed on Form EOIR-26, the Notice of Appeal. Since October 1, 2026, the fee is $1,060: $110 under INA 286(m) plus $950 for fiscal year 2027 (91 FR 54211). It was $1,030 before that date. Bond appeals have no fee.

All EOIR fees are paid through the EOIR Payment Portal at epay.eoir.justice.gov. Since February 23, 2026, EOIR no longer takes checks or money orders. The downloadable receipt has to go with the filing.

If you cannot afford the fee, file Form EOIR-26A, the fee waiver request, with the appeal. Under 8 C.F.R. 1003.38(d), an appeal that arrives without the fee or a fee waiver request "will not be deemed properly filed."

What else the court threw out, and what survived

The same order set aside two more pieces of the 2026 rule.

• Presumptive summary dismissal. The rule would have had appeals dismissed within 15 days unless a majority of permanent Board members voted, within 10 days, to accept the case. That mechanism, at 8 C.F.R. 1003.1(d)(2)(ii), is vacated.
• Automatic waiver. The rule's sentence treating any issue not raised in the Notice of Appeal as waived, at the end of 8 C.F.R. 1003.38(b)(3), is vacated.

Other parts of the rule survived. The most important for most people is the briefing schedule in 8 C.F.R. 1003.3(c): both sides file their briefs at the same time, within 20 days. There is no reply brief unless the Board invites one, and extensions are granted only in exceptional circumstances. That is a short window, so the work on the brief should start before the briefing schedule arrives.

The Board's older grounds for summary dismissal, at 8 C.F.R. 1003.1(d)(2)(i)(A) to (H), were never part of the 2026 rule. They still apply. A Notice of Appeal that gives the Board no real reasons can still be dismissed, so the waiver sentence being gone is no reason to file a thin one.

While the appeal is pending, and after

An asylum case on appeal is still a pending asylum case. If you owe the Annual Asylum Fee, the appeal does not pause it; see our post on the annual asylum fee. Employment authorization based on the asylum case ends immediately if the Board denies the appeal.

If the Board rules against you, the next step is a petition for review in the federal court of appeals. That deadline is 30 days from the final order of removal under INA 242(b)(1), 8 U.S.C. 1252(b)(1). The record the Board and the court look at is the record from the immigration judge's hearing, which is why the hearing is where cases are won. If new facts come up later, a motion to reopen has its own strict limits, explained in our post on the one-motion rule.

Deadlines on appeal are unforgiving, and the right answer here is not the one printed in the regulation. If you have a decision from an immigration judge, speak with an immigration lawyer about your own case as soon as you can, well before the 30 days run out.