The Trump administration can resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday.
The one-page emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, as is typical in such cases. Although the justices cleared the way, for now, for the swift removals to continue, the court also announced that it would fast-track the case and hear oral arguments about it in December, setting up a final ruling on the issue next year.
The court’s three liberal justices noted that they would have denied the government’s request to resume the deportations.
The decision was a victory for the administration, which has made sending immigrants to so-called third countries, including those that have faced allegations of human rights abuses, a major part of its mass deportation efforts.
The deportation flights had been blocked in recent weeks, however, after a federal court ruled the administration could not deport migrants to third countries unless they were given an opportunity to contest their removals, including to voice concerns that they might be persecuted or tortured abroad.
The justices’ ruling means that the administration can, for now, continue its program and conduct rapid deportations including to countries like Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound and beaten by the police, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The Supreme Court had weighed in previously on the administration’s efforts to send immigrants to third countries.
In May 2025, the Trump administration asked the justices to step in and clear the way for third-country deportations after a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked the administration from sending people to countries not their own — in that case South Sudan — without the chance to object.
In a one-paragraph ruling, the court’s conservatives allowed the administration to continue the deportations over the noted dissents of the three liberals.
Since then, the Trump administration has continued to deport immigrants under the program, including to authoritarian countries with histories of human rights abuses. So far, the administration has sent more than 25,000 people to third countries as part of its mass deportation efforts, according to a social media post by James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security. Among the countries were Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, Honduras and the Central African Republic.
Some immigration and human rights experts have asserted that the third-country deportations may be part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave on their own, rather than face the fear of being sent to a country where they have no ties.
In his brief, Solicitor General D. John Sauer characterized the third-country deportation program as “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”
Mr. Sauer wrote that the appeals court ruling had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations,” including canceled deportation flights and disrupted delicate diplomatic negotiations with other countries.
Lawyers for a group of immigrants challenging their removals said in a brief that the Trump administration had ignored “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.”
They argued that the Trump administration could avoid any delays in its deportation program simply by “providing the notice and opportunity to be heard that the law requires.”
