US Supreme Court allows Trump to restart third-country deportations

The decision gives the Trump administration another tool in its immigration crackdown and allows the deportations to continue while the legal fight over the policy moves forward.

The court on Tuesday put on hold a ruling by US District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, who had said that the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of sending migrants to so-called third countries was unlawful.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in December. A final ruling on whether the policy is legal will come later.

Supreme Court allows deportations to restart

The court’s decision means the administration can again send migrants to third countries while the case is being decided.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices disagreed with the decision allowing the deportations to restart immediately.

The case came from a class-action lawsuit filed by immigrant rights groups on behalf of migrants who were trying to stop the US government from sending them to third countries without notice and without giving them a chance to explain what harm they could face.

Human rights groups say more than 25,000 migrants have already been sent to 29 countries under the policy, which was introduced last year. Most of them were sent to Mexico.

The policy is part of Trump’s wider effort to carry out mass deportations. Immigration enforcement has been one of his main priorities since he returned to office last year.

Migrants sent to countries they have no ties to

The Trump administration has used the policy to send migrants to countries where they may have no connection. Those countries have included South Sudan, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and the Central African Republic.

The US State Department advises Americans not to travel to South Sudan because of risks including crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.

Department of Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision. “A bad day for criminal illegals and open-borders activists alike,” Percival wrote on social media.

But lawyers representing the migrants strongly criticised the ruling.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the court had “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,” she said.

What did the lower court rule?

In February, Judge Brian Murphy ruled that the policy violated immigration law procedures as well as due process protections under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.

Due process generally means the government must give people notice and an opportunity for a hearing before taking certain actions against them.

Murphy’s ruling came after immigrant rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the policy.

The Supreme Court had already intervened in the case earlier. In 2025, it suspended an earlier order from Murphy that had temporarily stopped the third-country deportations.

The Supreme Court later removed limits Murphy had placed to protect a group of migrants from being sent to South Sudan.

The legal fight began in 2025 after the Department of Homeland Security increased efforts to deport migrants who could not be returned to any country named in their deportation orders.

How the third-country policy works

Under the policy, migrants can be quickly sent to third countries if those countries have given the US credible diplomatic assurances that they will not persecute or torture the people being deported.

For countries that have not provided such assurances, migrants are supposed to be told where they are being sent. US authorities would then assess the risk of persecution or torture, but only if the migrant raises that concern on their own.

In its emergency filing before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department called third-country deportations “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”

But Judge Murphy and critics of the administration have said the policy is also affecting migrants who had already received legal protection from being returned to their home countries.

The case has been heavily contested since it began.

Murphy previously found that the Trump administration had “repeatedly violated, or attempted to violate” his orders.

In 2025, the judge also found that the administration had violated another order requiring it to take additional steps before trying to send a group of migrants to South Sudan.

The Supreme Court’s latest decision allows the third-country deportations to continue for now. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments on the broader legal dispute in December, after which the court is expected to issue a final ruling on the policy.