The Supreme Court on Tuesday again backed the Trump administration’s removal of migrants to countries where they have no ties, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to continue the deportations without advance notice.
The justices granted President Donald Trump’s emergency request to continue the speedy deportations that have left migrants in indefinite detention in African countries and stranded in nations they have no ties to.
The court announced the ruling in a one-page order, where it also said it would decide the issue in its upcoming term. The order asked DHS and the challengers to the policy to file briefs on whether the third-country removals are lawful and other legal issues, and set oral arguments for December.
“In our second Supreme Court victory in less than a week, DHS’s third country removal policy is back in effect,” DHS General Counsel James Percival, in a post on X. “A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike.”
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Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted they would have denied the application.
In a June 2025 decision, the court’s conservative majority also sided with the government on the issue, lifting a federal judge’s limits on the third-country removals.
Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the court’s decision allows the Trump administration to send migrants to countries where they face persecution or torture.
“That is a devastating result for people who will be deported under a policy that two federal courts already have found unlawful,” Realmuto said in a statement. “But today’s order does not decide that the policy is lawful. The Court has agreed to hear that question on an expedited schedule.”
Since the justices last stepped in, lower courts concluded the removals were unlawful because the administration orchestrated them without giving the immigrants sufficient notice to raise a challenge.
In the application, the government said DHS had to cancel a flight to three countries carrying 70 people with criminal convictions because of an appellate court’s decision deeming the deportations illegal.
“The unexpected springing-back of district court’s order has, this Office is informed, created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations—including the cancellation of flights—and led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals,” the filing says.
Lawyers for the immigrants challenging the policy argued in a filing that the lower courts didn’t bar the removals altogether, it simply required advance notice to the migrants. Those who have been deported under the policy have said they’re not told where they’re being taken before boarding the deportation flights.
“The record shows that class members removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present country-specific protection claims have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection,” the filing says. “These harms cannot be undone.”
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