Supreme Court lets quick deportations to third countries resume for now
while it weighs Trump policy
[September 30, 2026]
By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Donald
Trump’s administration continue swiftly deporting people to countries
other than their own for now, while the justices consider whether the
policy is legal.
The apparent 6-3 order temporarily lifts lower court requirements for
migrants to get a chance to object before being sent to countries to
which they have no ties.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would
have kept the lower court order in place.
The Trump administration said last week the lower court order forced the
cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for
three countries.
The conservative majority has sided with the administration before on
the core Trump administration policy, allowing deportation flights to
temporarily continue last year.
The court said it will consider several questions: whether the policy is
lawful, whether lower courts had the authority to consider the case and
issue a sweeping block, as well as other questions the government deems
appropriate.
The order “has now allowed the administration to resume sending people
to third countries where they may face persecution, torture,
imprisonment, or other grave danger,” said Trina Realmuto, executive
director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and one of the
lawyers representing immigrants in the case.
“But today’s order does not decide that the government’s policy is
lawful,” she said in a statement. “The Court will hear that question on
an expedited schedule.”
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Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration
has deported some 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries,
from Liberia to Guyana. The vast majority have been sent to Mexico.
Trump’s Republican administration has said that it sends people with
final deportation orders to third countries when they can't be
returned to their homelands or their native countries won’t accept
them, including those who have criminal convictions. Those
governments provide assurances that people won’t be persecuted or
tortured, federal attorneys said.
Attorney General Todd Blanche called the policy “an entirely lawful
and critical tool for immigration enforcement" in a social media
post.
Some migrants, though, have found themselves imprisoned in countries
they’d never heard of before their arrivals. Others also face
serious safety risks and are left with little choice except to
return to the home countries they were fleeing. Many have no
criminal convictions and have been found to be at risk of torture or
persecution, attorneys for the immigrants said.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump
administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who
are living in the United States illegally.
___
AP correspondent Tim Sullivan contributed to this report from
Minneapolis.
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