U.S. appeals court rejects Trump policy allowing swift deportations to third countries

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The ruling came in a class-action ‌lawsuit filed by migrants subject to deportation orders that has become a key test ‌of ⁠what due process protections the government must provide before removing people to countries with which ⁠they have no connection. File | Photo Credit: Reuters

A U.S. federal appeals court rejected on ​Friday (September 18, 2026) a policy adopted by President Donald Trump’s administration that allows authorities to ⁠rapidly deport migrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to raise safety concerns.

Ruling in a case that is likely headed to the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st ‌U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a February decision by a lower-court judge that declared the Department of Homeland Security’s policy unlawful.

The ruling came in a class-action ‌lawsuit filed by migrants subject to deportation orders that has become a key test ‌of ⁠what due process protections the government must provide before removing people to countries with which ⁠they have no connection.

“This decision confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings,” Trina ​Realmuto, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at ‌the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said

Under Mr. Trump, the administration has entered into a series of agreements that have allowed it to send more than 25,000 migrants to at least 29 third countries, in many cases Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees ‌International and Human Rights First.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal. Earlier in the ​same case, the administration twice convinced the Supreme Court to lift a preliminary injunction protecting migrants’ due process rights, clearing the way for eight men to be deported to ⁠South Sudan.

Trump’s third country deportations pose risk of abuse and incarceration

Under the third-country deportation program, DHS adopted a policy in March 2025 that would allow migrants to be sent to such countries if immigration authorities have credible diplomatic assurances they ‌will not be persecuted or tortured there.

The policy called for only minimal notice before a migrant could be sent to a third country that had not given the State Department such assurances.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, set aside the policy and concluded that it failed to protect migrants’ due process rights and could lead to their swift deportation to unfamiliar and potentially dangerous countries, without notice.

On appeal, the Trump administration contended that ‌Judge Murphy’s order if left intact would usurp its authority to execute potentially thousands of valid orders of deportation to third countries.

But ​U.S.