The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own while the justices weigh whether the policy is legal.
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The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own while the justices weigh whether the policy is legal.
The 6-3 order, brief and unsigned, put on hold a ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that had thrown out the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country removal policy. The court gave no reasoning, but it agreed to hear full arguments on the policy in December.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche welcomed the decision in a post on X, casting it as a vindication of the administration’s legal position.
“Now for the second time, SCOTUS just granted our stay in conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens,” Blanche wrote. “Again, this is entirely lawful and a critical tool for immigration enforcement. Unlike the lower court, SCOTUS waited to hear from both sides before making the decision.”
The policy lets officials send deportees to so-called “third countries,” nations that were never listed on a migrant’s removal order. The administration leans on it because many home governments simply refuse to take their own citizens back. If a country assures Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it will not persecute or torture the people being sent there, the government treats that as enough.
Solicitor General John Sauer had told the justices the policy was an essential tool for removing some of the worst criminal aliens, and that the lower-court block had forced DHS to scrap a flight carrying 70 deportees to three countries. Rubio’s State Department has struck agreements with up to 31 nations, mostly in Africa and Latin America, at a cost of at least $410 million pledged through the end of June.
The legal fight started earlier this year. Murphy, a Biden appointee, ruled in February that the policy violated due process protections under the Fifth Amendment because migrants were not given notice or a real chance to raise fears of torture. The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of his ruling on Sept. 18. Tuesday’s order was the second stay the administration has won from the high court in the case.
The court’s three liberal members, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the migrants, argued the ruling puts people at immediate risk of being sent to places where they face persecution before they ever get to make their case.
On the same day, Burundi said it would accept deportees from the United States who have no connection to the East African country, though only those not facing prosecution and with no links to terrorism, according to a spokesperson for the country’s president.
Human rights groups count more than 25,000 migrants deported to 29 countries under the policy so far, most of them to Mexico. A final ruling likely will not come until the summer of 2027.
