Lawyers for immigrants whom the Trump administration is seeking to deport urged the Supreme Court on Monday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in Massachusetts that bars the government from sending them to countries that are not identified in their removal orders – a procedure known as “third-country removals.” Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which represents the immigrants, told the justices that the decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy “does not prevent third-country removals; rather, it simply requires” the Trump administration “to do so lawfully.”
The filing came four days after U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to pause Murphy’s order – the third time that he has asked the court to get involved in the dispute. Sauer contended that Murphy’s order deprived the government of “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens,” and he argued that it “rests on the same fundamentally flawed legal premises as the previous rulings.”
The legal battle over third-country removals began shortly after President Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term, when he signed an executive order in which he directed the Department of Homeland Security to take “all appropriate actions” to remove noncitizens who were in the United States despite having orders to deport them.
Within weeks, DHS issued internal guidance instructing a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to determine whether undocumented immigrants who had received deportation orders but had not yet been removed because of the prospect that they would be tortured if they were returned to their home countries could instead be sent to a different country. Additional guidance issued the following month indicated that before immigrants can be sent to a country that is not specifically identified in their removal orders and that has not assured the United States that the immigrants will not face torture, DHS must follow a series of procedures: It must notify the immigrants of the planned removal, give them a chance to “affirmatively express” fear that they will face torture, and – if needed – conduct a screening to determine the likelihood that they will indeed be tortured.
In March, four immigrants with removal orders filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts, where they argued that they feared being deported to a country that was not identified in their orders.
Murphy issued an order that prohibited the government from deporting the plaintiffs and others like them to third countries without first providing them with written notice of the third country to which they might be removed, as well as a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge that removal. Moreover, Murphy added, DHS should also determine whether the immigrants’ fears of torture were “reasonable,” rather than whether it is “more likely than not” that they will be tortured. If immigrants cannot make that showing, Murphy added, DHS must give them at least 15 days to seek to reopen their immigration proceedings.
Sauer went to the Supreme Court for the first time in May 2025, asking the justices to put Murphy’s order on hold while the government’s appeal moved forward. Over a dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor that was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, the court on June 23 granted that request.
Sauer returned to the court for the second time one day later, asking the justices to “clarify[]” that, in the wake of their first order, the Trump administration could deport eight men being held on a U.S. military base in Djibouti after Murphy had ruled that efforts to remove them to South Sudan violated his order.
On July 3, the court issued a brief opinion in which it indicated that its June 23 order paused Murphy’s order “in full” – and also applied to his later order regarding the South Sudan deportations. Kagan wrote a brief concurring opinion, in which she indicated that although she disagreed with the court’s decision to pause Murphy’s order, she did “not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.” Sotomayor again dissented, joined by Jackson.
Once the case returned to his court, Murphy in February 2026 issued a final judgment in the immigrants’ favor and threw out the third-country removal policy. He ruled (among other things) that before immigrants can be removed to a third country, they have the right to “meaningful notice” and a “meaningful opportunity” to contest removal to that third country on the ground that they have a reasonable fear of being persecuted or tortured there.
On Sept. 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit largely upheld Murphy’s ruling, and on Wednesday it dissolved a March 16, 2026, order that put Murphy’s ruling on hold while the government appealed.
The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court again on Thursday afternoon, asking the justices to step in for the third time. Sauer told the justices that the reinstatement of Murphy’s order has “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations—including the cancellation of flights—and led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals.”
In their brief on Monday opposing a stay of Murphy’s ruling, the immigrants contended that the Trump administration’s arguments “ignore the significant harm resulting from deporting thousands of longtime U.S. residents, many with no criminal history, to third countries without regard to the persecution or torture they face there.” Immigrants who have been deported “without meaningful notice or an opportunity to present” claims about what could happen in the particular countries to which they would be sent, they wrote, “have faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance,” and have been sent from those countries “to countries from which the United States had already granted them protection. These harms cannot be undone.”
By contrast, the immigrants argued, the harms that the Trump administration claims will occur if Murphy’s order is allowed to remain in place “are neither irreparable nor caused by” his decision: he does not require the Trump administration to release immigrants from detention, “prohibit third-country removals, or undo existing arrangements.” The government, they said, “can avoid any resulting delays by timely providing the notice and opportunity to be heard that the law requires.”
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[ H/T SCOTUSblog ]
