WASHINGTON: A ruling to halt deportations of people to countries other than their own threw a core immigration policy of the Trump administration into question, at least temporarily, and prompted a desperate appeal to the Supreme Court on Thursday.
The administration said the ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came Wednesday just minutes before midnight, forcing the cancellation of a flight with 70 people that was headed to three countries. It said justices needed to step in to "halt that chaos" and said the flight cancellation "required a new round of diplomatic engagement with each of the three countries," which it did not name.
Plaintiffs for immigrants sought emergency relief from the appeals court Wednesday night, saying they heard from "multiple sources" that a deportation flight was scheduled the next day from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.
Within hours of that request, the appeals court said it was clarifying a ruling against the policy last week and said a previous order allowing flights to continue while legal challenges play out was no longer in effect.
Administration officials reacted furiously. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the order "in the dark of night" robbed authorities of "an entirely legal and valuable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration."
The justices previously allowed the deportation flights to temporarily continue when the case came before them last year.
The vast majority of people deported to countries other than their own have been sent to Mexico, but under a series of often-secret agreements, the administration has deported thousands of others to more than two dozen countries, from Liberia to Guyana.
Some have found themselves in countries they'd never heard of before their arrivals and held there against their will. Some also face serious safety risks, and are left with little choice except to return to the home countries they were fleeing.
This month, lawyers for two men deported to Equatorial Guinea said they were beaten and held at gunpoint in a hotel-turned-detention center by police who covered their heads with bags.
Trump's Republican administration has said that it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when their homelands won't accept them or they can't be returned there. Those governments provide assurances that people won't be persecuted or tortured, attorneys said.
James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, said Wednesday on X that 25,000 people in the U.S. illegally have been deported to third countries, calling those deportations "an essential public safety tool."
The lower court order doesn't completely prohibit third-country deportations, but it requires the government give people a meaningful chance to object.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to halt that decision, arguing it would force unreasonable delays and the reworking of agreements with foreign countries.
"The order below would again obstruct DHS from efficiently removing aliens ... by inordinately delaying third-country removal for any alien who voices a fear of persecution or torture in that country, no matter how frivolous or belated the claim," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.
The appeal comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.
