Update (1516ET): The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to resume third-country deportations and agreed to hear the underlying dispute this winter.
In a brief emergency-docket order in DHS v. D.V.D., the justices stayed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s Feb. 25 judgment, which had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from sending people with final removal orders to countries not named in those orders unless they first received notice and a chance to raise persecution or torture claims.
The stay puts the First Circuit’s Sept. 18 ruling on hold and lets DHS restart removals under its March 2025 guidance while the case proceeds.
The Court also treated the government’s application as a petition for review and granted certiorari. Argument is set for the December 2026 sitting. The stay lasts until the Court issues its final judgment.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the stay.
The order is the Court’s third intervention in the same litigation. It previously paused Murphy’s preliminary injunction on June 23, 2025, and clarified on July 3, 2025, that the pause applied in full – including a flight the administration sought to send to South Sudan after it was diverted to a U.S. base in Djibouti.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Court last week that the First Circuit’s late-night dissolution of its own stay had thrown removal operations into chaos, including cancellation of a flight carrying about 70 deportees – some with criminal convictions – to three countries.
DHS counsel James Percival has said more than 25,000 people have already been removed under the program. Rights groups put the figure at more than 25,000 people sent to about 29 countries, many of them to Mexico.
The justices directed briefing on whether the district court had jurisdiction, whether classwide declaratory relief and APA vacatur are allowed under 8 U.S.C. §1252(f)(1), and whether the third-country guidance is unlawful under the removal statute, the Due Process Clause, or CAT/FARRA.
Tuesday’s order does not decide those questions. It restores the policy for now and tees them up for a full hearing.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 24 to revive its third-country deportation program that sends deportees to countries that were not named in their removal orders.
The Trump administration has said it removes individuals to third countries when it cannot quickly return them to their home countries.
However, critics say the policy is used to bypass legal restrictions and deter illegal immigration.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy, adopted in March 2025, allows immigration officials to deport foreign nationals in as little as six hours.
The Supreme Court has already ruled in favor of the program twice on its emergency docket.
As Matthew Vadum further reports via The Epoch Times, following Supreme Court rules, the application is addressed to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson because she oversees emergency appeals from decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
However, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer took the unusual step of asking Jackson to refer the stay request to the full court instead of ruling on it herself if she will not freeze the lower court’s order.
Jackson voted against the government both times when the litigation previously came before the high court.
Sauer said lower court decisions were throwing into chaos the delicate arrangements the government has negotiated with other nations to take in deportees who are not their citizens.
“Third-country removals require careful negotiation with foreign governments, which are rarely enthusiastic about accepting foreign citizens (especially criminals), and often requires obtaining travel documents and devoting significant manpower to the staging of flights to protect government officers and flight crews,” he said.
Disrupting those plans “imposes massive costs on the government,” and forces it to engage in new instances of diplomatic engagement with countries “who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption.”
The filing concerns a First Circuit ruling from Sept. 18 that struck down DHS guidance allowing removal based on diplomatic assurances that receiving countries will not persecute or torture people sent to them.
The three-judge panel raised concerns about “blanket assurances” from third countries that promise U.S. deportees won’t be tortured or persecuted, saying this promise is not sufficient and does not properly allow foreign nationals to raise persecution or torture concerns.
The panel affirmed the final judgment U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued Feb. 25 vacating the DHS guidance. In its Sept. 18 decision, it affirmed the striking down of the policy.
Murphy previously certified the respondents, who are people with final removal orders, as a nationwide class.
The respondents argue that the government may deport a removable noncitizen to a willing third country, but not without inquiring about whether the person would be persecuted or tortured in that country.
The case is known as DHS v. D.V.D.
On Sept. 24, Jackson did not respond to Sauer’s request. Instead, she directed the other side to file a response to the application by 4 p.m. on Sept. 28.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 09/29/2026 – 15:16
