Hendra Wijaya
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday granted the Trump administration's emergency request to keep sending migrants to third countries, effectively halting a lower-court ruling that had paused the removals over due process concerns. The move clears the way for the administration to resume flights carrying people to countries to which they may have no family, cultural or historical ties.
The order, issued a day after the high court granted the government's petition, was unsigned — the norm for emergency applications — and contained no explanation of the court's reasoning. It also did not disclose how the justices voted, leaving the public without a breakdown of a decision that touches on the fate of thousands of people in federal custody.
At the foot of the order, however, the three liberal-leaning justices made their position clear. Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan each indicated they would have denied the administration's petition, signalling deep division over whether people may be removed to countries that offer no realistic protection against persecution.
The ruling is expressly temporary. The court called for arguments in December, meaning the administration's practice will continue in the interim while its appeal proceeds against the decision issued by Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts. Murphy had ruled that migrants must be given a "meaningful" opportunity to raise safety concerns before being handed over to a third country, and indicated that some individuals had been stripped of the chance to contest their removals as part of their due process rights.
The administration's rationale for the policy is straightforward, officials have said: third-country deportations offer a route to removing people whose own governments are unwilling to accept them. Trump campaigned on a pledge to carry out the "largest deportation operation in American history," and has dramatically expanded the practice since returning to office in 2025, alongside a broader effort that has drawn sustained protest at detention facilities.
The Supreme Court has weighed the practice before. In June 2025 it issued another unsigned order allowing such removals to proceed, paving the way for eight men — including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam — to be flown to South Sudan, a country the State Department advises Americans against visiting because of "crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict." The Department of Homeland Security described the removals as "a win," while rights groups said the move flouted basic legal protections.
Critics point to two intersecting problems with the policy. The first concerns the track records of the governments now accepting US deportees, many of which have documented histories of human rights abuses. The second is that third-country removals are used to work around court protection orders that bar sending a person back to their homeland out of fears of persecution — and advocates warn that some receiving countries have gone further, returning deportees, including asylum seekers, to the very places they fled in fear of torture or other harm.
The scale of the effort has grown quickly. At least 35 countries have signed agreements with the Trump administration to take in non-citizens, according to a tally maintained by the nonprofit groups Refugees International and Human Rights First. Those organisations estimate that more than 25,000 people have already been subject to third-country deportations.
That figure drew a fresh warning on Monday, when UN human rights experts wrote to the US government urging it to halt the removals, saying they were exposing deportees to a heightened risk of abuse. "At gravest risk are children, women, persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT persons, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other people in extremely vulnerable situations," the experts said, adding that the practice offered a class of already-frail people very little recourse if they encountered mistreatment after arrival.
On the same day the court acted, Burundi became the latest country to strike such a deal with Washington. According to officials, the east African government will accept only individuals who are not facing prosecution and who have no links to "terrorism" — language that has done little to answer critics' concerns about the due process safeguards surrounding the transfers.
Public anger was visible on the ground. On Tuesday, demonstrators laid flowers outside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California before marching to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, where they called for the facility's closure and an end to what they described as inhumane conditions and deaths in immigration detention.
What happens in December will determine whether the December pause becomes something more permanent. Lawyers and advocates are likely to argue that the government's own speed — moving thousands of people before merits challenges are resolved — is itself a procedural defect, a theme that runs through a string of recent courtroom defeats for the deportation campaign. For the justices, the case forces a choice between two readings of the law: a government's authority to remove non-citizens who no other state will take, and a migrant's right to know where they are being sent and to say why it is unsafe.
For now, the practical effect of Tuesday's order is unambiguous. Deportations are flying again, the numbers are rising, and the full argument over their legality remains unresolved until the court sits in December.
Comments (0)