The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a major legal victory to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, ruling 6–3 on Monday to allow the administration to resume fast-track deportations to third-party countries—without prior notice or delay.
The ruling overturns a lower court’s injunction that had blocked the practice of sending criminal illegal immigrants to nations other than their countries of origin, such as South Sudan, El Salvador, and Libya. The decision immediately reinstates the federal government’s ability to conduct rapid removals, even in cases where migrants argue potential danger in the receiving country.
The court’s six conservative justices formed the majority opinion, while liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented strongly. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor criticized the decision as reckless. “This Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied,” she wrote.
At the heart of the case was a group of migrants who claimed their deportation orders were being misused to reroute them to unfamiliar and unstable countries. Their attorneys argued that this practice violated both due process and U.S. immigration statutes, urging the Court to uphold a federal judge’s earlier ruling.
That ruling, from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, had temporarily blocked the deportations and ordered that any affected migrant be allowed a “reasonable fear interview”—an opportunity to express concerns about torture or persecution in the destination country.
The Biden-appointed judge’s order had also required that individuals not be deported until those interviews were completed, even if they were being held in offshore locations like a U.S. military base in Djibouti.
Trump administration officials hailed the Supreme Court’s reversal. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the migrants in question included violent offenders and posed national security risks, calling them “some of the worst of the worst.”
This marks Trump’s second major deportation victory in less than a month. In May, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that he could end temporary deportation protections for over 300,000 foreign nationals, most from countries in Central and South America, as well as parts of Africa.
With this latest ruling, President Trump’s hardline immigration policies are being reinforced at the highest levels—setting the stage for even broader enforcement heading into the 2026 midterms.
