US Supreme Court allows Trump to continue third-country deportations

The high court grants an emergency petition ahead of expected arguments in the case, slated for December.

Demonstrators denounce conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California on September 29, as part of US President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign [Jill Connelly/AP Photo]

The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue third-country deportations, halting a lower-court ruling that paused such removals over questions of due process.

On Tuesday, the high court granted the administration’s emergency request to resume the deportations, which involve sending immigrants to countries they may have no connection to.

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The court’s order was unsigned, as is typical for an emergency petition. It also does not include an explanation or a list of how the justices voted.

But at the bottom of Tuesday’s order, the court’s three left-leaning justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan – indicated they would have denied the Trump administration’s petition.

The Supreme Court’s decision to pause the lower court ruling is temporary. The order calls for arguments to be heard in December.

That hearing comes as Trump administration continues its appeal against the lower court’s ruling, handed down by Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Murphy had ruled that immigrants must be given a “meaningful” chance to raise safety concerns before their removal to third-party countries.

In pausing such deportations, Murphy indicated that some immigrants may have been denied the opportunity to challenge their deportations as part of their due process rights.

Tuesday, however, is not the first time the Supreme Court justices have weighed in on the practice of forcibly sending people to third countries, which Trump dramatically stepped up since his return to office in 2025.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to implement the “largest deportation operation in American history”, and his officials have argued that third-country deportations are a means of removing individuals whose home countries may not accept them.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court also issued an unsigned order allowing such removals to proceed.

That cleared the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan , a country the US State Department advises against visiting because of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.

The Department of Homeland Security at the time called the removals “a win”, while rights groups said the move flouted basic legal protections.

Critics have expressed concern that many of the governments receiving third-country deportations have a record of human rights abuses.

Third-country deportations have been used to bypass court protection orders that prevent immigrants from being sent back to their home countries due to fears of persecution.

But advocates say that some of those third-party countries have ultimately sent deportees, including asylum seekers, back to the places where they feared they would be at risk of torture or other harms.

At least 35 countries have signed agreements with the Trump administration to take in the third-country nationals, according to a tally by the nonprofits Refugees International and Human Rights First.

The groups estimate that more than 25,000 people have been subject to third-country deportations so far.

On Monday, human rights experts at the United Nations wrote to the ‌US ‌government urging a halt to such removals, warning they were putting deportees at heightened risk of abuse.

“At gravest risk are children, women, persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT persons, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other people in extremely vulnerable situations,” the experts said.

On Tuesday, Burundi became the latest country to enter an agreement with the US to take non-citizen deportations.

Officials said the country would only take in people who were not facing prosecution and had no links to “terrorism”.

高等法院批准了一项紧急申请，该案预计将于 12 月进行辩论。

9月29日，示威者在加利福尼亚州阿德兰托移民及海关执法局处理中心抗议恶劣条件，这是美国总统唐纳德·特朗普大规模驱逐出境行动的一部分。[吉尔·康纳利/美联社照片]

美国最高法院允许唐纳德·特朗普总统的政府继续向第三国驱逐移民，推翻了下级法院此前因正当程序问题而暂停此类驱逐的裁决。

周二，最高法院批准了政府的紧急请求，恢复了驱逐出境行动，该行动涉及将移民送往他们可能没有任何联系的国家。

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错误列表 2/3：特朗普政府完成向南苏丹的遣返

美国法院阻止特朗普将移民遣返至第三国的计划（共3项，此为第3项）

法院的命令没有署名，这在紧急请愿书中很常见。命令中也没有解释原因或列出法官们的投票情况。

但在周二的命令末尾，最高法院的三位左倾大法官——索尼娅·索托马约尔、凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊和埃琳娜·卡根——表示，她们会驳回特朗普政府的请愿。

最高法院暂停执行下级法院裁决的决定是暂时的。该命令要求在12月举行听证会。

此次听证会召开之际，特朗普政府仍在就马萨诸塞州波士顿法官布莱恩·墨菲作出的下级法院裁决提起上诉。

墨菲曾裁定，在将移民遣返回第三国之前，必须给予他们“有意义的”机会来提出安全方面的担忧。

墨菲表示，暂停此类驱逐出境可能会剥夺一些移民根据其正当程序权利对驱逐出境提出质疑的机会。

然而，周二并不是最高法院大法官们第一次对强行将人送往第三国的做法发表意见，特朗普自 2025 年重返总统职位以来，大幅加强了这种做法。

特朗普竞选时承诺要实施“美国历史上最大规模的驱逐行动”，他的官员辩称，将人员驱逐出第三国是清除那些其祖国可能不接受他们的人的手段。

2025年6月，最高法院也发布了一项未署名的命令，允许进行此类驱逐。

这为将包括古巴、缅甸和越南国民在内的八名男子遣返回南苏丹铺平了道路。美国国务院建议不要前往南苏丹，因为那里存在“犯罪、绑架和武装冲突”。

当时的国土安全部称此次遣返行动是“一次胜利”，而人权组织则表示此举藐视了基本的法律保护。

批评人士表示担忧，许多接收第三国遣返人员的政府都有侵犯人权的记录。

由于担心遭受迫害，一些移民被遣返回国，而法院的保护令却被用来阻止他们被遣返回国。

但倡导者表示，其中一些第三方国家最终将包括寻求庇护者在内的被驱逐者送回了他们担心会遭受酷刑或其他伤害的地方。

据非营利组织“国际难民组织”和“人权第一”统计，至少有 35 个国家与特朗普政府签署协议，接收第三国国民。

这些组织估计，迄今为止已有超过 25,000 人被遣返回第三国。

周一，联合国人权专家致信美国政府，敦促其停止此类遣返行动，并警告称，这种做法会使被遣返者面临更高的虐待风险。

专家表示：“面临最大风险的是儿童、妇女、残疾人、人口贩运受害者、LGBT群体、人权捍卫者、无国籍人士以及其他处境极其脆弱的人群。”

周二，布隆迪成为最新一个与美国达成协议，允许美国遣返非公民的国家。

官员表示，该国只会接收那些没有面临起诉且与“恐怖主义”没有联系的人。