Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Revive Third-Country Deportation Policy

On September 24-25, 2026, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to resume deporting migrants to third countries—nations other than their own where they may have no ties—after a lower court judge halted the practice roughly a week earlier. The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice led the appeal, with Attorney General Todd Blanche confirming on Thursday that the DOJ would ask the high court, which has a conservative majority, for intervention. The administration has increasingly relied on third-country removals as part of its broader immigration enforcement agenda, and has signed agreements with multiple countries around the world to accept deportees who are not their nationals. The lower court ruling that prompted this appeal blocked the government from continuing these removals, creating what several outlets described as an urgent obstacle to the administration's deportation operations. The appeal specifically seeks to allow deportations to proceed without what government filings characterized as interference from migrants' legal counsel. As of the reporting, the Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the administration's request, leaving the third-country deportation policy in a state of legal limbo. It remains unresolved which specific countries are named in the underlying agreements, how many individuals have been or would be affected by resumed removals, and the precise legal reasoning behind the lower court's original decision to halt the policy. The timeline for a Supreme Court decision was also not specified in available reporting.