The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. The one-page emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, as is typical in such cases.

Although the justices cleared the way, for now, for swift removals to continue, they also announced that the court will fast-track the case and hear oral arguments in December, setting up a final ruling on the issue next year.

At stake is a hallmark of President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda: sending people to countries where they have no ties, including Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, Honduras and the Central African Republic — several of which have faced accusations of human rights abuses. The case marks another major test of the limits of executive power at the Supreme Court.

The three liberal justices noted they would have denied the government's request to resume the deportations.

For the December argument, the justices asked lawyers for the administration and for the immigrants who challenged the policy to focus their briefing on two questions: whether the lower court judge who paused the swift deportations had the authority to do so, and whether the policy violated the Constitution and international protections against torture.

Who is affected and which steps change

The ruling temporarily reverses a recent federal court decision that blocked the deportations. That court had ruled the administration could not deport migrants to third countries unless they received an opportunity to contest their removals, including the chance to voice concerns that they might be persecuted or tortured abroad.

Tuesday's decision means the administration can, for now, conduct rapid deportations without that procedural step, including to countries such as Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound and beaten by police, according to reporting by The New York Times. So far, the administration has sent more than 25,000 people to third countries as part of its mass deportation efforts, according to a social media post by James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security.

Reactions

Percival celebrated the ruling and called it a "victory."

"A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike," he said in a statement.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and part of the team representing the immigrants, called the emergency decision "a devastating result." The court, she said, "has allowed the administration to resume sending people to third countries where they face persecution or torture."

She noted, however, that the court had agreed to hear full argument in December, and that Tuesday's decision "does not decide that the policy is lawful."

What the parties argued

Solicitor General D. John Sauer characterized the third-country deportation program in his brief as "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens." He wrote that the appeals court ruling had "created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations," including canceled deportation flights and disrupted diplomatic negotiations with other countries.

Lawyers for a group of immigrants challenging their removals said in a brief that the Trump administration had ignored "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." They argued the administration could avoid delays in its deportation program simply by "providing the notice and opportunity to be heard that the law requires."

Background

The justices had weighed in on the administration's third-country deportation efforts before. In May 2025, the administration asked the justices to step in after a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked it from sending people to countries not their own — in that case South Sudan — without the chance to object. In a one-paragraph ruling, the court's conservatives allowed the deportations to continue over the dissents of the three liberals.

Since then, the administration has continued to deport immigrants under the program, including to authoritarian countries with histories of human rights abuses.

What comes next

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in December and is expected to issue a final ruling on the policy's legality next year. Immigrants facing removal and their representatives should track the court's docket and official DHS announcements for updates on procedures in effect during the interim.