PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to continue deporting people to countries they are not originally from.
On Sept. 18, a U.S. Circuit Court upheld an order by District Court Judge Brian Murphy to block the deportation of immigrants to third countries without first giving them notice of where they might be sent or the opportunity to challenge their removal due to safety concerns.
The Supreme Court put a hold on that order on Tuesday, letting the practice continue until it can hear and consider the merits of the case.
According to Sarah Paoletti, Director of the Transnational Legal Clinic at UPenn’s Carey Law School, the court stepped into the case earlier than usual.
“There was a decision made without oral arguments, without full briefing on the merits of the underlying policy,” she explained.
She said that the U.S. is bound by the UN’s Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention not to deport immigrants to countries where they will face persecution or torture.
“Planes are going to start departing almost immediately to Equatorial Guinea, to Eswatini, to South Sudan,” Paoletti said. “I spoke with one person who said, ‘I’d rather go back to my home country, where I know I’m likely to be killed. But at least there, when I die, I have family there who will bury me.’”
According to SCOTUSblog, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer — who first asked the high court to pause Murphy's order in May 2025 — argued to justices that the lower courts' decisions to pause deportations took away "an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens."
The Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments on the deportation policy in early December, and a final ruling is expected next year.
The decision overturns two previous lower court rulings blocking deportations to third countries without proper notice or the opportunity to challenge removal
The decision overturns two previous lower court rulings blocking deportations to third countries without proper notice or the opportunity to challenge removal
