Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Third-Country Deportation Policy
A federal appeals court in Boston ruled Friday that U.S. immigration officials cannot send detainees to a third country without giving them prior notice and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the destination, handing the Trump administration a significant legal defeat in one of the more aggressive corners of its immigration crackdown.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit largely upheld a lower-court order that found the Department of Homeland Security’s “third-country” deportation policy unlawful. The policy, enacted last year, has allowed officials to remove migrants to countries where they have no ties—sometimes thousands of miles from their homeland. In some cases, migrants from Latin America have been sent to sub-Saharan Africa.
At issue were DHS rules that permitted immigration officials to send deportees to so-called third countries with little or no notice or chance to contest removal. Under the policy, officials could send a migrant to another country without notice if that nation gave the State Department blanket assurances that the deportee would not be persecuted or tortured. When such assurances were absent, the policy called for some notice.
The appeals court affirmed most of U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling. Murphy has repeatedly rebuked the administration’s third-country deportation campaign, finding it violated deportees’ due process rights.
“An individual’s right to contest removal to a country based on a fear of persecution in that country means little if one does not receive prior notice of the intended removal destination and a meaningful opportunity to contest that destination,” the appellate panel wrote.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, one of the groups that sued over the policy, said the First Circuit “clearly held that the government cannot evade protections against persecution and torture by simply changing the deportation destination.”
“For over a year, many class members [have] been deported to countries they had never been told they could be removed to, with little or no notice and without a meaningful opportunity to explain the dangers awaiting them there,” said Trina Realmuto, the group’s executive director.
DHS General Counsel James Percival said late Friday on X: “The third country deportation policy continues, as the First Circuit’s ruling is not currently in effect. If you claim fear in your home country, DHS has the right to send you elsewhere.”
Friday’s decision will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. Even so, it amounts to a major legal setback for an intensifying part of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
The administration has brokered third-country deportation agreements with more than 30 nations around the world, including African countries such as Liberia. In some cases, deportees are sent to a third country because a court order protects them from being sent to their country of origin but does not bar the government from deporting them altogether.
More than 25,000 migrants have been deported to third countries under the Trump administration, according to one advocacy group. About 80% of them have been sent to Mexico.
CBS News reported earlier this week on a group of deportees flown to Liberia last month. They included citizens of South and Central American countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela, as well as people from other parts of Africa. The migrants, who are living in a hotel, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not notify them that they would be removed to Liberia and gave them no chance to challenge their deportation to West Africa.
“I’m concerned,” Honduran native Elvis Rodriguez Venturas told CBS News. “I feel far away, on the other side of the world.”
If it survives further appeal, the ruling could force DHS to revise how it handles third-country removals, requiring clearer notice and a more meaningful chance to contest removal before deportees are sent to nations where they have no ties.