By Nate Raymond and Katharine Jackson
BOSTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration will ask the US Supreme Court to allow it to continue to swiftly deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering them the chance to raise any safety concerns about their destination, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday.
Blanche made the announcement after immigrant rights lawyers secured an order from a federal appeals court on Wednesday night that put into effect a ruling deeming the US Department of Homeland Security’s policy on deportations to so-called third countries unlawful.
The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals issued that order at the request of immigrant rights lawyers, who asked it to intervene after they learned that the administration had planned a third-countries deportation flight scheduled for Thursday that would send migrants to three African nations.
Blanche in a social media post said the 1st Circuit’s order “blocked us from conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens, an entirely legal and invaluable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration.”
An appeal had been expected. Earlier in the same case, the Supreme Court twice lifted a judge’s preliminary injunction protecting migrants’ due process rights and later cleared the way for eight men to be deported to South Sudan, at the administration’s request.
As part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, DHS adopted a policy in March 2025 allowing migrants to be sent to such countries if US immigration authorities receive credible diplomatic assurances the migrants will not be persecuted or tortured.
But the policy also called for only minimal notice before a migrant could be sent to a third country that had not given the State Department such assurances.
The policy was challenged in a class action lawsuit by migrants who could be subject to it. US District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of Democratic former President Joe Biden, set aside the policy in February.
The 1st Circuit largely upheld Murphy’s ruling on Friday, holding that immigration law requires migrants be given a meaningful chance to raise any concerns that they might have about facing persecution or torture if they are deported to those countries.
Yet DHS took the position that Friday’s ruling was not yet in effect and was planning a flight out of Virginia on Thursday that would take migrants to Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs challenging the policy.
The administration based its position on the fact that the 1st Circuit in March issued an order pausing Murphy’s ruling. The 1st Circuit dissolved that March order late on Wednesday at the request of the plaintiffs.
“The order makes crystal clear no flights or buses should carry out third-country removals,” said Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Will Dunham)
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