Washington, Sep 30 (IANS) The US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own while the justices consider whether the government’s third-country removal policy is lawful.
The court stayed a February ruling by a federal judge in Massachusetts that had set aside the policy and required migrants to receive meaningful notice and an opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture before removal.
The order does not finally decide whether the administration’s policy is legal. The court agreed to hear arguments during its December session, with a full ruling expected later.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the administration’s request for a stay. The majority did not provide a written explanation for granting it.
Under the Department of Homeland Security policy, a person with a final removal order may be sent to a country that was not listed in the original order if that government agrees to accept the individual.
If no such assurance exists, the government says the migrant must be informed of the destination and given an opportunity to express fear of persecution or torture. DHS generally waits at least 24 hours after issuing the notice.
An immigration officer then determines whether the person is more likely than not to face such harm. Those who do not meet that standard can be deported.
The administration called third-country removals “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens”.
It said the lower-court restrictions had forced the cancellation of a flight carrying 70 migrants with criminal convictions to three countries. The government said the cancellation caused additional costs and required renewed diplomatic engagement.
The Justice Department argued that courts had exceeded their authority by imposing classwide relief and interfering with decisions governed by immigration and foreign-policy law.
Lawyers for the migrants said the policy could send people to unfamiliar countries without a meaningful opportunity to show that they could face persecution, torture or further deportation to a country from which the United States had already protected them.
They accused the government of ignoring “the significant harm resulting from deporting thousands of longtime U.S. residents, many with no criminal history, to third countries without regard to the persecution or torture they face there”.
The migrants’ filing said some deportees had faced prolonged detention, beatings, sexual assault, disappearance and transfer from the receiving country to another nation.
“Where the Department of Homeland Security relies on a non-individualized diplomatic assurance, the policy permits removal without any notice or process at all,” their lawyers said.
Their filing cited an estimate that DHS deported more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries during 2025 and 2026. That number was presented by the migrants’ lawyers and was not established by Tuesday’s Supreme Court order.
The justices will examine whether the district court had jurisdiction, whether it could grant classwide relief and whether the policy violates federal immigration law, constitutional due-process protections or US obligations concerning torture.
The ruling concerns people already subject to final removal orders. It does not by itself change the status of lawful permanent residents, students, workers or other visa holders who are not in removal proceedings.
–IANS
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