The high court granted the emergency motion ahead of arguments in the case scheduled for December.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue deportations to third countries, blocking a lower court ruling that had suspended such deportations citing due process issues.
The high court on Tuesday granted the administration’s emergency request to resume deportations, including returning immigrants to unrelated countries.
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As is often the case with emergency motions, the court’s order was not signed. It also does not include an explanation or list of how the justices voted.
But at the bottom of Tuesday’s order, three left-leaning justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, indicated they would deny the Trump administration’s petition.
The Supreme Court’s decision to suspend a lower court’s decision is temporary. The order calls for arguments to be heard in December.
The hearing comes as the Trump administration continues to appeal a lower court ruling handed down by Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mr Murphy ruled that migrants must be given a “meaningful” opportunity to raise safety concerns before being transferred to a third country.
Murphy noted that in suspending these deportations, some immigrants may be denied the opportunity to challenge their deportations as part of their due process rights.
But Tuesday was not the first time the Supreme Court justices have weighed in on third-country deportation practices, which President Trump has dramatically tightened since returning to office in 2025.
President Trump campaigned on a promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” with Trump administration officials arguing that deportations to third countries are a way to expel individuals whose home countries may not accept them.
In June 2025, the Supreme Court also issued an unsigned order allowing such removals to proceed.
This paved the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be deported to South Sudan. South Sudan is a country that the US State Department advises against visiting due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security called the removal a “victory,” but rights groups argued the measure ignored basic legal protections.
Critics have expressed concern that many of the governments accepting deportations to third countries have a record of human rights abuses.
Deportation to third countries has been used to circumvent court protection orders that prevent immigrants from being returned to their home countries for fear of persecution.
But advocates argue that some of these third countries end up sending deportees, including asylum seekers, back to places they fear are at risk of torture or other harm.
At least 35 countries have agreements with the Trump administration to take in third-country nationals, according to a tally by the nonprofit groups Refugees International and Human Rights First.
The organization estimates that more than 25,000 people have been forcibly returned to third countries.
On Monday, U.N. human rights experts sent a letter to the U.S. government urging it to halt such transfers, warning they were putting deportees at risk of abuse.
“Those most at risk are children, women, people with disabilities, victims of human trafficking, LGBT people, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other extremely vulnerable groups,” the experts said.
On Tuesday, Burundi became the latest country to sign a deal with the United States to accept the deportation of non-citizens.
Officials said the country would only accept people who had not been prosecuted and had no links to “terrorism.”
