Supreme Court Pauses Ruling on Third-Country Removals, Will Hear Case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday paused a lower court judgment against the Trump administration’s policy of deporting migrants to third countries and agreed to hear arguments in the case in December.

The order lets the administration continue the deportations while the justices consider whether the policy is legal. The Associated Press reported that the apparent 6-3 order temporarily lifts lower court requirements that migrants get a chance to object before being sent to countries where they have no ties.

According to CNN, it is the third time the high court has let the administration enforce the effort on a temporary basis.

The Supreme Court order stays the Feb. 25, 2026, order and judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson received the administration’s stay application and referred it to the full court. The court treated the application as a petition for a writ of certiorari and granted it.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Jackson would have denied the stay. The brief, unsigned order did not explain the court’s reasoning, and the three liberal justices did not write separately to explain their position, CNN reported.

The court directed the parties to address three questions:

• whether the district court had jurisdiction over the migrants’ claims;
• whether it had authority to grant classwide declaratory relief and vacate the policy under the Administrative Procedure Act; and
• whether the government’s guidance on third-country removals violates federal immigration law, the Due Process Clause, or the law and regulations implementing the Convention Against Torture.

The order also allows the government to raise other questions it considers appropriate.

The administration filed its emergency appeal Sept. 24. CNN described it as seeking to pause a decision from the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that effectively blocked the removals. The order itself names only the district court’s order and judgment.

The administration argued that time was short because the appeals court decision had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations,” according to CNN.

In its appeal, the Justice Department complained that lower courts had “tripled down” with rulings against the policy despite the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions allowing it. The administration said the latest ruling caused “chaos” and forced a new round of diplomatic talks, CNN reported.

The administration said last week that the lower court order forced it to cancel a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries, according to the AP. CNN described the canceled flights as carrying dozens of migrants.

Groups representing the migrants countered that the lower courts had entered a final judgment, unlike the preliminary rulings that reached the justices before.

According to CNN, the high court’s emergency-docket decisions are not final rulings on the merits, though they can signal which way the court is leaning.

At the center of the dispute is the Convention Against Torture, which the Senate ratified in 1994. CNN reported that it generally bars deporting or extraditing someone to a country where the person might be tortured. The outlet said the law is vague about how officials should make that determination and what process migrants are owed.

Lower courts have found the law requires officials to notify migrants and let them raise a credible fear of torture, CNN reported. The Department of Homeland Security has argued that blanket assurances from a receiving country that no deportee will be tortured are enough.

The administration has said it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when they cannot be returned to their homelands or their native countries will not accept them, including people with criminal convictions. Federal attorneys said those governments provide assurances that deportees will not be persecuted or tortured, the AP reported.

In a social media post, Attorney General Todd Blanche called the policy “an entirely lawful and critical tool for immigration enforcement.”

Attorneys for the immigrants said many of those deported have no criminal convictions and have been found to be at risk of torture or persecution, according to the AP. The news agency reported that some migrants have been imprisoned in countries they had never heard of before arriving. Others face serious safety risks and have little choice except to return to the home countries they fled, the AP reported.

The administration launched the policy last year as part of its immigration crackdown, which has included a pledge to deport millions of people living in the United States illegally.

CNN reported that the United States has at times struggled to deport migrants whose home countries refuse to take them back. President Donald Trump’s answer was to send them to other countries, even ones where they have no ties.

The administration has deported about 25,000 people under the policy, according to estimates reported by both CNN and the AP. The AP reported that the removals have gone to more than two dozen countries, including Liberia and Guyana, under a series of often-secret agreements. The vast majority have been sent to Mexico, the AP reported.

The policy drew scrutiny last year after immigrant rights groups reported that migrants initially bound for South Sudan were being held in Djibouti in a converted Conex shipping container, according to CNN.

The Supreme Court reviewed the policy at an earlier stage of the case last year and allowed it to continue over the dissent of the three liberal justices. According to CNN, the court later sided with the administration again in a case involving that group of migrants, who were held for several weeks on a military base in Djibouti.

The order directs the clerk to set a briefing schedule so the case can be argued during the court’s December 2026 session. The stay will remain in place until the court’s judgment is sent down. CNN reported that a decision is expected by July.