Supreme Court takes up fight over Trump’s third-country illegal alien deportation policy

The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed the Trump administration an interim victory in its ongoing immigration crackdown, clearing the way for officials to continue deporting illegal aliens to third countries while the justices consider a legal challenge to the policy.

The justices granted the administration's request to stay a February ruling from a federal district court in Massachusetts that imposed additional procedural requirements before illegal immigrants could be removed to countries other than their own.

The high court also agreed to hear the administration's challenge, treating its emergency application as a petition for review and ordering the parties to prepare for arguments during the court's December session.

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Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the administration's request for a stay.

The decision gives the administration the immediate relief it sought as it presses ahead with third-country removals, even as the Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the policy remains.

The dispute centers on the Trump administration's efforts to remove illegal aliens to third countries. Lower courts have not categorically prohibited those removals but have required procedures intended to give aliens an opportunity to raise claims that they could face persecution or torture in the destination country.

The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court last week, arguing that those requirements were interfering with its ability to carry out removals and disrupting sensitive diplomatic negotiations with countries willing to accept deportees.

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"The order below also undermines our standing abroad," the administration argued in its filing, according to the ruling. "Finding third countries willing and able to accept aliens is a delicate diplomatic endeavor."

The government also argued that judicial intervention in those arrangements could cause "significant and irreparable harm to U.S. foreign policy."

Attorneys challenging their policy pushed back, arguing that the lower court's ruling did not prevent the administration from conducting third-country removals but instead required the government to provide notice and an opportunity for illegal aliens to raise protection claims before they were sent abroad.

"The judgment does not require release from detention, prohibit third-country removals, or undo existing arrangements," the challengers argued in their response.

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They alleged that illegal aliens removed without meaningful notice or an opportunity to raise country-specific protection claims had faced "prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault, disappearance, and chain refoulement."

Tuesday's order puts the February district court judgment on hold while the Supreme Court considers the case. The stay will remain in effect until the high court sends down its judgment.

The decision gives the administration the immediate relief it sought as it presses ahead with third-country removals, even as the Supreme Court has yet to decide.

"For the third time in 18 months, the Supreme Court has been called upon to stay the same local district judge’s campaign to halt the Trump Administration from removing illegal aliens including many of the worst-of-the-worst criminals to countries willing to receive them," White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital.

"The President will stop at nothing in his effort to make America safe again," Bis added. "Today’s ruling from the Supreme Court yet again affirms the lawfulness of the President’s homeland security agenda."

The court directed its clerk to establish a briefing schedule allowing the case to be argued during its December 2026 argument session.