Supreme Court on another immigration matter, this time over its ability to deport immigrants to countries that are not their home nation. In a 45-page appeal, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said a lower court's decision Wednesday had led to canceled removal flights, with over 1,400 illegal immigrants, some of whom were known criminals, remaining in the U.S. and facing potential release from custody.
So-called third-country agreements have been necessary across multiple administrations, due to some nations refusing to accept deportees from the U.S. Under the Trump administration, new agreements have been struck, including with countries that human rights advocates have issued stark warnings about. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the case in question in July 2025, sending the case back to lower courts.
Newsweek reached out to DHS, and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First—the groups representing the original plaintiffs—for comment Thursday afternoon. The government filed the emergency appeal Thursday, arguing that district and appeals courts improperly interfered with DHS' ability to remove immigrants with final removal orders to countries other than those named in said orders. In its motion, the Trump administration said a First Circuit Court of Appeals decision late Wednesday to lift an existing stay meant a district court ban on the removals had sprung back into place, prompting the cancellation of at least one deportation flight destined for three different countries.
Part of the argument to allow third-country removals revolves around who the DOJ said is set for deportation—those convicted of murder, attempted murder, rape and other violent crimes. The DOJ said some of those people would have to remain in the U.S. because no other county was willing to take them. Since the ban's return, 150 deportees had been pulled from flights, with further departures at risk, the government said.
Plaintiffs have warned that deportees face the risk of torture or persecution in the countries to which they have no connection, a fear Solicitor General D. John Sauer sought to dismiss, writing there was a "lack of any realistic risk that they will be persecuted or tortured with the concurrence of foreign governments in third countries where they have little or no preexisting connection, particularly given that the Executive Branch has determined those countries are acceptable places of removal." This is a breaking news story.
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