Supreme Court revives Trump's third-country deportation policy for now

The Supreme Court has temporarily cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to countries where they have no citizenship or personal ties, while agreeing to take up the underlying legal dispute later this year, according to CBS News.

In an unsigned order issued Tuesday, the justices put a hold on a February ruling from a federal district judge that required immigration officials to give deportees additional notice and a chance to contest their removal before being sent to a so-called third country. An appeals court had largely backed that lower court ruling earlier this month, according to CBS News.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted they would have turned down the administration's request to lift the lower court's order, CBS News reported.

The order means the administration can, for now, keep relying on a policy first put in place in March 2025 that permits officials to deport migrants to third countries without telling them in advance where they are being sent, so long as the receiving nation gives a general assurance that the deportee will not face persecution or torture there, according to CBS News.

Alongside the emergency order, the court said it will hear full arguments in the case in December, with a ruling likely not expected until sometime around the summer of 2027, CBS News reported. The justices asked attorneys for the Justice Department and for the migrants challenging the policy to be ready to address whether the practice conflicts with federal statute, the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, or related regulations.

The Trump administration has argued that the lower court restrictions were hampering the Department of Homeland Security's ability to swiftly remove immigrants who are in the country illegally, including some with criminal histories, according to CBS News.

James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, welcomed the ruling in a post on social media, calling it the department's second Supreme Court win in less than a week and encouraging people living in the U.S. without legal status to leave voluntarily, referencing a government incentive program, according to CBS News.

Over roughly the past year and a half, the administration has reached agreements with several dozen countries, primarily in Africa and Latin America, to accept deportees who are not citizens of those nations, CBS News reported. That has included sending migrants from countries such as Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela to African nations, and migrants from Asia and elsewhere to Latin American countries. Some deportees have been sent to countries considered especially unstable or dangerous, including the Central African Republic and South Sudan, according to CBS News.

CBS News has previously reported that deportees sent to Liberia from countries including Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela said they were told of their transfer to Africa only shortly before departure, or while already in the air.

The policy is part of the administration's broader push to intensify immigration enforcement during President Trump's second term. The Justice Department told the Supreme Court last week that the lower court's block on third-country removals had already forced Homeland Security to cancel a flight carrying 70 migrants, some with criminal records, bound for three different countries, according to CBS News. The administration has estimated that thousands of people have already been deported under the policy, with thousands more considered eligible for removal to third countries.