Attorneys for migrants told the Supreme Court that people removed without meaningful notice or a chance to raise protection claims had faced “prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement.” On Tuesday, the court allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to resume deporting people to countries other than their own while the justices consider whether the policy is legal.
The order temporarily halted an appeals court ruling that had effectively blocked the removals. It’s not a final decision on the policy’s legality. The court gave no explanation in its brief, unsigned order, while setting arguments for December 2026 and an expected decision by July.
A hearing after removals resume
The policy lets the government send migrants with final deportation orders to third countries if their homelands won’t accept them or they can’t be returned there. Some people covered by the policy have criminal convictions; attorneys for immigrants said many had none and faced a risk of torture or persecution. Some deportees have little choice but to return to the countries they fled, AP reported.
The administration says receiving governments provide assurances that deportees won’t face persecution or torture. The Department of Homeland Security has said blanket assurances are enough. Lower courts have required the government to give migrants notice and a meaningful opportunity to raise a credible, country-specific fear before removal.
That procedural fight sits beneath the court’s three questions for its eventual decision: whether the district court had jurisdiction, whether it could decide the case for the entire affected class, and whether the policy is lawful. The justices also said the administration could propose “other questions” for consideration. For now, the stay remains in effect while the court considers the case.
Diplomacy on top, risk for deportees
The administration says the lower-court ruling created “substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations,” caused “chaos,” required “a new round of diplomatic engagement,” and disrupted sensitive negotiations. It argued that judicial intervention could cause “significant and irreparable harm to U.S. foreign policy,” calling the search for receiving countries “a delicate diplomatic endeavor.”
Federal attorneys said the lower-court decision forced them to cancel a flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries. CNN estimated that 25,000 migrants have been removed under the policy. AP reported about 25,000 deportations to more than two dozen countries under often-secret agreements, including Liberia and Guyana; the vast majority went to Mexico.
The administration began the policy last year as part of its immigration crackdown, sending some people to countries with which they have no ties when their home countries decline to receive them. Immigrant rights groups drew attention last year to migrants initially bound for South Sudan who were detained in Djibouti in a converted Conex shipping container. AP reported that some migrants have been imprisoned in countries they’d never heard of before arriving and face serious safety risks.
The court leaves the machinery running
The legal challenge concerns the Convention Against Torture, which the Senate ratified in 1994 and which generally bars deportation or extradition to a country where a migrant might be tortured. The law doesn’t clearly specify how the administration should make that determination or what process migrants should receive.
The administration asked the Supreme Court on September 24 to pause a decision by the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals. It had also challenged a February ruling by a federal district court in Massachusetts imposing additional procedural requirements. The migrants’ attorneys said the lower-court judgment didn’t require release from detention or prohibit third-country removals: “Denying a stay does not prevent third-country removals. Rather, it simply requires them to do so lawfully.”
The Supreme Court had previously allowed the policy to continue temporarily last year and later sided with the administration in a case involving migrants held for several weeks on a military base in Djibouti. Tuesday’s order was the third time the justices had allowed the effort to continue temporarily. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the latest stay.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital that the ruling “yet again affirms the lawfulness of the President’s homeland security agenda.” The court hasn’t decided the merits. Until it does, deportations can resume while migrants’ opportunity to contest the risk they face remains at the center of the case.