Supreme Court Allows Third-Country Deportations to Continue Pending Review

The Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted the Trump administration to continue deporting people to countries other than their own while the justices examine whether the practice is lawful.

The court said it would hear arguments on whether migrants must be given a meaningful opportunity to object before being sent to nations where they have no connections.

The order, which appeared to split the court 6-3, sets aside an appeals court ruling for the time being.

Federal attorneys had argued that the lower-court decision forced the cancellation of a deportation flight carrying roughly 70 people headed for three countries.

When the case reached the justices last year, they had similarly allowed the deportation flights — a central element of the administration's immigration policy — to proceed on a temporary basis.

Through a series of arrangements that have often been kept secret, the administration has sent about 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, among them Liberia and Guyana. The overwhelming majority have been deported to Mexico.

The Republican administration has said it sends individuals with final removal orders to third countries when they cannot be returned to their homelands or when their native countries decline to accept them, including people with criminal convictions. Federal attorneys said those governments give assurances that the individuals will not be persecuted or tortured.

Attorneys for the immigrants, however, have said some have nonetheless ended up imprisoned in countries they had never heard of before arriving. Some face serious safety risks and are left with little option but to return to the home countries they were fleeing. Many have no criminal convictions and have been found to be at risk of torture or persecution, their lawyers said.

The case unfolds amid a broad immigration crackdown by the administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people living in the United States illegally.