The US Supreme Court has temporarily allowed the Trump administration to resume its third-country deportation policy, under which some people are sent to countries with which they have no ties. The justices will hear arguments over the practice in December.
The ruling pauses a February order by a federal district judge requiring immigration authorities to give deportees notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal before sending them to a third country. A federal appeals court largely upheld that decision earlier this month.
The administration argued that the lower-court rulings had prevented the Department of Homeland Security from “efficiently removing aliens”, including people with criminal records.
The Supreme Court’s decision allows officials to continue relying on a policy introduced in March 2025. It permits deportations to third countries without telling people their destination, provided those countries give the US government blanket assurances that deportees will not be persecuted or tortured.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have rejected the administration’s request for emergency relief.
The court said it would consider whether the policy breaches federal law, the Constitution’s Due Process Clause or immigration regulations. A ruling is expected by the summer of 2027.
James Percival, general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, welcomed the decision and urged people in the US illegally to leave voluntarily.
“In our second Supreme Court victory in less than a week, DHS’s third country removal policy is back in effect,” he wrote on X. “A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike. It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home.”
Over the past 18 months, the administration has secured agreements with several dozen countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, to accept deportees who are citizens of other nations.
The arrangements have allowed US officials to send people from countries including Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela to African countries, while migrants from Asia and elsewhere have been sent to Latin American nations. Some deportees have been sent to countries including the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
In Liberia, people deported from Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela said they only discovered they were being sent to Africa hours before their flight, or during the journey.
The third-country deportations form part of President Donald Trump’s wider immigration crackdown. The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the lower-court order had forced Homeland Security to cancel a flight carrying 70 people to three countries, some of whom had criminal records.
The administration estimates that the policy has resulted in the deportation of thousands of people in recent months, with thousands more eligible to be removed to third countries.
