The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations of illegal immigrants, blocking a lower-court ruling that had halted flights carrying convicted criminals.
In a brief unsigned order Tuesday, the justices granted an emergency request from the government and put a hold on an appeals-court decision that had treated the current removal process as unlawful. The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Oral arguments are set for December, with a full ruling to follow.
The stay restores a core enforcement tool the administration has used when home countries refuse to take people back. Officials said the lower-court hold was already canceling flights, raising costs, and leaving dangerous criminals in place. Immigration advocates said the order puts people at immediate risk of being sent to countries where they have no real chance to seek protection.
The fight is not abstract. It sits at the center of how the United States removes people who entered illegally, have final removal orders, and cannot be returned to their countries of origin.
Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy sided with a group of immigrants challenging the policy. He agreed they should get a “meaningful opportunity” to claim they could face torture or persecution in a third country before the government put them on a plane.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that approach and cited federal immigration law that bars removal to a place where a person faces likely persecution. That appeals-court ruling went into effect Sept. 23 after an earlier hold, which sent the Trump administration racing to the Supreme Court.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have argued the lower-court orders do not require anyone to be released from detention, and do not ban third-country removals outright if people get a chance to object. The administration answered that the extra process was still choking off operations.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the hold “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations” and “led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals.” One scheduled flight that was to carry 70 people with criminal convictions to three different countries was immediately canceled in the week before the high court acted.
That pattern tracks other recent high-court fights over ICE mandatory detention rules tied to the same enforcement push.
The Trump administration’s position is straightforward. It has struck agreements with nations willing to accept deportees and has received assurances those countries will not mistreat them. On that basis, officials say, no individualized determination is required for each person.
The government also said it would not immediately deport people if it has not received assurances the receiving country will not torture or persecute them. In court papers, the administration warned that lower-court limits undercut diplomacy with partners willing to take removals.
Fox News reported the filing put it this way: “The order below also undermines our standing abroad... Finding third countries willing and able to accept aliens is a delicate diplomatic endeavor.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the stay.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis framed the order as another rebuke of the same district judge’s effort to stop removals. “For the third time in 18 months, the Supreme Court has been called upon to stay the same local district judge’s campaign to halt the Trump Administration from removing illegal aliens,” she said. “Today’s ruling from the Supreme Court yet again affirms the lawfulness of the President’s homeland security agenda.”
Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival was blunter after the order landed.
Percival said:
"A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike. It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home,"
The line captures the administration’s view of who the policy targets and what lawful options remain for people facing removal.
Lawyers for the challengers cast the Supreme Court stay as a sudden return to danger. Four unnamed immigrants brought the case. The lead plaintiff, identified in court records only as D.V.D., is from Cuba and has severe mental illness. His lawyers say he fears being sent somewhere he would not receive psychiatric care.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance representing the plaintiffs, said the order “means that people facing removal to third countries are once again at immediate risk of being sent to places where they have no meaningful opportunity to seek protection.” She added: “That is an enormous consequence for people whose lives and safety are on the line.”
Reuters reported a further statement from Realmuto after the stay: “The court has allowed the administration to resume sending people to third countries where they face persecution or torture. That is a devastating result for people who may be put on a plane before they ever have notice or an opportunity to raise a fear claim.”
In court papers, the plaintiffs also alleged that some people already sent to third countries have been mistreated, with claims of indefinite detention and physical and sexual abuse. Those claims remain contested allegations in litigation, not findings adopted by the Supreme Court in Tuesday’s short order.
Readers following the back-and-forth will recognize the same legal lane as when the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to restore the policy after the appeals court blocked it.
NBC News reported that about 15,000 people were deported to third countries in 2025, according to the Migration Policy Institute, with Mexico taking the majority. Thousands more have been sent since President Trump’s second term began in January 2025, including to South Sudan, Eswatini, and Rwanda.
Other outlets put the running total higher. Coverage of the same order described more than 25,000 migrants removed to dozens of countries under the policy, again with Mexico as the main destination, and listed destinations that have included South Sudan, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, and the Central African Republic.
Breitbart reported agreements with as many as 31 nations at a cost of at least $410 million, and quoted Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche after the stay: “Now for the second time, SCOTUS just granted our stay in conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens. Again, this is entirely lawful and a critical tool for immigration enforcement.”
Last year the Supreme Court already allowed the administration to keep the policy moving after earlier lower-court blocks, and later clarified that a decision covered eight men the government sought to send to South Sudan. Tuesday’s order fits that same emergency docket pattern: keep removals running while the full legal fight continues.
It also sits beside other enforcement questions the justices have kept alive, including a separate push in which the administration asked the Court to revive an immigration detention fight after a state pardon wiped out an earlier case.
The unsigned stay does not end the case. The justices will hear argument in December and then issue a definitive ruling on whether federal immigration law requires the kind of individualized “meaningful opportunity” the Massachusetts courts demanded before third-country removal.
Until then, the practical effect is clear. The government can again move people to countries that have agreed to take them, under the assurance framework the administration defends. The challengers retain their claims for the full merits fight. Criminal aliens who were booked on canceled flights are back in the removal pipeline the White House says the lower courts disrupted.
For a national audience, the mechanism is simple even when the paperwork is not. Some countries will not accept their own nationals. The United States then seeks willing third countries, obtains commitments against persecution and torture, and carries out final removal orders. Judges in one circuit tried to graft on extra process. The Supreme Court has now paused that experiment while it takes the statute up directly.
Related high-court work on identity and enforcement, including when the Supreme Court cleared tools to verify voter citizenship, shows the same theme: national rules enforced from Washington, not rewritten by a single district courtroom.
Border security is not a seminar. When courts freeze removals of convicted illegal immigrants, the public absorbs the cost in delayed flights, strained diplomacy, and criminals who should already be gone. Tuesday’s order put the law back on the side of the people who have to live with the consequences.
