The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave President Trump a temporary victory on a central piece of his mass deportation agenda, agreeing the administration can, for now, resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own.
Although the justices cleared the way for the policy to continue, they also announced that the court would fast-track the case and hear oral arguments about it in December, setting up a final ruling on the issue next year and a new test for presidential power at the court.
The one-page emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count, as is typical in such cases.
On the line in December will be Mr. Trump’s policy of sending people to countries where they have no ties, including nations that have faced allegations of human rights abuses. Among the countries migrants have been sent to are Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Costa Rica, Honduras and the Central African Republic.
The court’s three liberal justices noted that they would have denied the government’s request to resume the deportations.
The justices asked the lawyers for the administration and the immigrants who challenged the policy to focus their briefing for the December argument on whether the lower court judge who had paused the swift deportations had the authority to do so, and whether the policy violated the Constitution and international protections against torture.
James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security, celebrated the court’s ruling. In a statement, he called it a “victory.”
“A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike,” he said. “It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home.” He ended his statement with a link to department instructions for immigrants on how to self-deport.
Trina A. 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 in a statement, “has allowed the administration to resume sending people to third countries where they face persecution or torture.”
But she pointed out that the court had agreed to hear full argument in December, saying that Tuesday’s decision “does not decide that the policy is lawful.”
The deportations had been blocked recently after a federal court ruled the administration could not deport migrants to third countries unless they were given an opportunity to contest their removals, including to voice concerns that they might be persecuted or tortured abroad.
The justices’ ruling means that the administration can, for now, continue its program and conduct rapid deportations including to countries like Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound and beaten by the police, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The justices had weighed in previously on the administration’s efforts to send immigrants to third countries.
In May 2025, the Trump administration asked the justices to step in and clear the way for third-country deportations after a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked the administration 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 administration to continue the deportations over the noted dissents of the three liberals.
Since then, the Trump administration has continued to deport immigrants under the program, including to authoritarian countries with histories of human rights abuses. 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 Mr. Percival.
Some immigration and human rights experts have asserted that the third-country deportations may be part of a broader strategy by the Trump administration to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave on their own, rather than face the fear of being sent to a country where they have no ties.
In his brief, Solicitor General D. John Sauer characterized the third-country deportation program as “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”
Mr. Sauer wrote that the appeals court ruling had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations,” including canceled deportation flights and disrupted delicate 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 that the Trump administration could avoid any delays in its deportation program simply by “providing the notice and opportunity to be heard that the law requires.”