The US Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump's administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own, temporarily lifting a lower-court ruling that had paused the removals over due process concerns. The justices will hear arguments in the case in December, with a final ruling on the policy to come later.

The order was unsigned, as is typical for emergency requests, and gave no explanation. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and its three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, noted they would have denied the request. The justices granted a Justice Department petition to suspend a ruling by Judge Brian Murphy, a federal judge in Boston, who found that migrants must be given a meaningful chance to raise fears for their safety before being sent to a third country. In February, Murphy ruled the policy violated immigration law procedures and the Fifth Amendment's due process guarantees, which generally require notice and an opportunity for a hearing before the government takes certain adverse actions.

The case began in 2025, when the Department of Homeland Security stepped up removals of migrants who cannot be returned to the countries named in their deportation orders. Under the policy, people could be sent quickly and without notice to countries that gave credible diplomatic assurances they would not persecute or torture them. For other countries, deportees would be told of their destination, but US officials would assess the risk of persecution or torture only if the individual raised the fear themselves. The administration calls the practice an essential tool for removing some of the worst foreign criminals. Critics, including Murphy, say it also affects people who had been granted legal protection against return to their home countries.

The Supreme Court has sided with the administration before in this litigation. In June 2025, it allowed removals to proceed, clearing the way for eight men, including nationals of Cuba, Myanmar and Vietnam, to be sent to South Sudan, a country the US State Department advises Americans to avoid because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict. A DHS lawyer, James Percival, called Tuesday's decision "a bad day for criminal illegal aliens and open-borders activists". Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, who represents the plaintiffs, called it "a devastating outcome" for people who could be put on a plane before getting notice or a chance to seek protection.

The scale of the practice is large. Rights groups estimate more than 25,000 people have been deported to third countries, and at least 35 countries have signed agreements with Washington; Burundi became the latest on Tuesday, saying it would accept only people not facing prosecution and without links to terrorism. On Monday, more than 20 independent UN human rights experts warned the deportations were "triggering a cascade of human rights violations", including risks of torture, trafficking and arbitrary detention, and urged that the arrangements be halted. Plaintiffs say some deportees were sent on to the countries they had fled, while others were beaten, sexually assaulted, detained or disappeared. The December arguments will test whether the policy's limited notice and screening meet constitutional standards.