The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to immediately allow it to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first giving them a meaningful opportunity to argue that they could face persecution or torture there.
The Justice Department’s emergency application came after the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved a stay that had temporarily allowed the administration’s third-country deportation policy to remain in effect.
The move put a lower court ruling requiring greater notice and procedural protections back into effect and led the government to cancel a deportation flight, according to the administration.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to issue an immediate administrative stay, which would allow deportation flights to resume while the broader legal dispute continues.
He also asked the justices to keep the lower court’s judgment on hold while the administration pursues further review.
The Supreme Court docket shows that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency matters arising from the 1st Circuit, requested a response from the immigrant-rights groups challenging the policy by 4:00 p.m. EDT Monday.
The administration argues that the lower court's order has created significant operational problems for immigration authorities.
Sauer said the ruling had forced officials to cancel flights, increased costs, complicated diplomatic arrangements and made it more difficult to remove migrants the government considers dangerous criminals. The administration said one canceled flight had been scheduled to carry about 70 people to three countries.
The government has argued that third-country removals are necessary when migrants' home countries will not accept them or when returning them there is otherwise impractical.
Under the policy, migrants with final removal orders can be sent to countries that are not their countries of nationality and may have no prior connection to them. The receiving governments provide assurances that the migrants will not be persecuted or tortured, according to the administration.
The government says the process is an important tool for enforcing final removal orders, particularly when countries of origin refuse to cooperate.
The dispute centers on whether migrants must receive effective notice of the specific third country to which they are being sent and an opportunity to raise concerns about persecution or torture before removal.
In a Sept. 18 ruling, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit largely upheld a February decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy that found the administration's guidance unlawful. The appeals court concluded that migrants must receive meaningful notice and an opportunity to contest removal to a third country based on fear of persecution or torture.
The appeals court did, however, reject part of Murphy's ruling concerning the order in which the government must consider possible countries for removal, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue that claim.
The court's central ruling on fear-based claims remained intact.
On Sept. 23, the appeals court then dissolved the stay that had kept Murphy's judgment from taking effect while the case was being litigated. That decision effectively restored the lower court's requirements and prompted the administration to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration introduced the third-country removal policy in 2025 as part of its broader immigration enforcement campaign.
Human-rights groups and other organizations tracking the program say more than 25,000 migrants have been sent to at least 29 third countries, with Mexico receiving the largest number. Other destinations have included countries in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.
The policy has been particularly contentious when migrants had previously received protection against removal to their countries of origin because of fears of persecution or torture.
One of the most closely watched episodes involved migrants who were originally expected to be sent to South Sudan but were instead held at a U.S. military facility in Djibouti after litigation intervened.
The group included people from countries including Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. The Supreme Court later allowed their removal to proceed.
The case has become a broader test of how far the administration can go in using third-country removals to overcome the practical difficulties of deporting migrants whose home governments will not accept them.
A major part of the legal battle involves the Convention Against Torture, an international agreement ratified by the United States in 1994.
Article 3 of the convention prohibits sending a person to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing the person would face torture.
U.S. law and regulations implement those protections through procedures that allow migrants to seek protection from removal based on a risk of torture.
The immigrant-rights groups challenging the Trump administration argue that those protections mean migrants must be told where they are being sent and given a meaningful chance to explain why removal to that particular country would put them at risk.
The administration disputes that the lower courts can impose the procedures they have required and argues that diplomatic assurances from receiving countries provide an important safeguard.
The Supreme Court has already intervened twice in the broader litigation, allowing the administration to continue the policy while the case proceeded.
The latest filing argues that those earlier actions support the government's request for an immediate stay and that the lower court's renewed restrictions have disrupted an immigration program that has already been operating for more than a year.
The administration is asking the justices to act before the case reaches a final resolution on the merits.
As of Friday, the Supreme Court had not ruled on the emergency request. The court's docket lists the case as Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. and confirms that the response from the challengers is due Monday afternoon.
