US Supreme Court Allows Third-Country Removals Pending Review

Last week, the Supreme Court, without a word of explanation, allowed the Trump administration to send immigrants to countries where they have no prior contact, where they do not speak the language, and where they could face torture and death. In doing so, the court repeated what it had done 15 months earlier, despite findings by a district court that this practice was illegal and risked great harm. And although the court granted certiorari and said that it will hear the case in December, in the meantime and likely until a decision months later, the Trump administration is allowed to continue this inhumane practice.Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. IThe issue of the Trump administration deporting individuals to countries where they had no prior contact first came to the court on its emergency docket in spring 2025. A federal district court in Boston had issued a preliminary injunction stopping this. The case involved deporting individuals from such countries as Venezuela and Honduras to others such as Guatemala and South Sudan.Federal law is quite specific as to where a person can be deported to. Specifically, 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2)(E), lists where a noncitizen can be taken, such as the country from which the alien was admitted to the United States, the country where the person is a citizen, the country where the person was born, and so on. The federal statutory provision concludes that only “[i]f impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible to remove the alien to each cou