Meridian World Desk
The US Supreme Court on 29 September allowed the Trump administration to resume rapidly deporting migrants to third countries without giving them a prior chance to object, staying a lower court injunction while the justices prepare to hear full arguments on the policy in December. The unsigned order, issued 6-3, did not explain the court’s reasoning, a common feature of emergency rulings of this kind.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, according to the order, which lifted a requirement imposed by a federal judge in Boston that migrants receive meaningful notice and an opportunity to challenge removal to a country that is not their own before being sent there.
The administration has deported roughly 25,000 people to third countries since President Donald Trump returned to office, under agreements with more than two dozen nations that in several cases have been kept secret from the public. The arrangements include countries such as Mexico, Liberia, Guyana, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.
A policy already tested once
The legal fight traces back to a June 2025 Supreme Court order that first cleared the way for third-country removals, allowing deportations to South Sudan to proceed. That earlier ruling sent eight men to a country the US State Department warns Americans against visiting because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.
The latest dispute began on 18 September, when a federal appeals court unanimously found the administration’s approach unlawful on due-process grounds, ruling that migrants facing removal to a third country needed a genuine chance to raise fears of persecution or torture there. Four days later, the administration said the ruling had forced it to cancel a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three separate countries. It asked the Supreme Court to intervene on 24 September, arguing that the notice-and-objection process disrupted deportation flights and left it unable to remove people whose own governments would not take them back.
The Supreme Court’s stay grants that request, at least until the justices hear arguments in December on whether the underlying policy is lawful. Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the policy publicly after the order, describing it as consistent with the law.
Warnings from lawyers and rights experts
Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and a lawyer for the migrants challenging the policy, said the ruling exposes deportees to the risk of persecution, torture or other grave danger, while stressing that the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether the policy itself is lawful. That question remains open until December, leaving the current, faster removals in a kind of legal limbo — lawful enough to proceed, but not yet found lawful.
Advocates have also pointed to conditions in some receiving countries. Equatorial Guinea, whose government has been described by advocates as corrupt and autocratic, has been cited over allegations that deportees sent there were mistreated. Those specific allegations have not been independently established. Separately, UN human rights experts are reported to have warned that the broader third-country deportation programme risks producing serious human rights violations, though that warning likewise remains unconfirmed by independent reporting.
What is firmly established is the scale of the programme and the direction it is now taking. Tens of thousands of people have already been removed to countries with which they have no prior connection, often under agreements the US government has not disclosed in full. With the Supreme Court’s protections now suspended for at least the next three months, that pace is set to continue, and potentially accelerate, before any final ruling on whether the practice is lawful at all.
The stay leaves migrants facing removal with fewer safeguards than they had a week ago, and with no guarantee those safeguards will return even if the court eventually sides against the administration in December. Deportation flights halted after the September appeals court ruling can now resume, and the administration has given no indication it intends to pause its expansion of third-country agreements while the case proceeds. For migrants already scheduled for removal, the practical effect is immediate: the chance to object before being sent to an unfamiliar and, in some cases, dangerous country has been removed for now, with no fixed date for its restoration.