Activist courts keep throwing themselves in front of Trump’s immigration enforcement.
The administration built a working system to remove illegal aliens even when their home countries won’t take them back.
And now a federal appeals court just gut-punched that program in a ruling that could send this fight straight back to the Supreme Court.
What the Court Just Did to Trump’s Third-Country Removal Program
A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down a Trump administration policy that allowed immigration authorities to rapidly remove illegal aliens to countries other than their own without first giving them a chance to raise safety objections.
The panel largely upheld an earlier ruling by US District Judge Brian Murphy, a Joe Biden appointee, who declared the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country removal policy unlawful.
The ruling originated from a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of illegal aliens facing deportation to countries not previously named in their removal orders and not identified during their immigration court proceedings.
DHS first adopted the third-country removal policy in March 2025. Under that policy, immigration authorities could send illegal aliens to a third country if that country gave the State Department credible diplomatic assurances that the deportees would not face persecution or torture. In cases where those assurances were absent, the policy required authorities to provide at least six hours of notice before the removal took place.
US Circuit Judge Seth Aframe, writing for the panel, said Murphy had adopted a “sensible” interpretation of immigration law when he required that migrants receive a “meaningful” opportunity to raise concerns before deportation.
“DHS’s proposed interpretation would deny access to that protection to a substantial swath of noncitizens who are sent to third countries with no notice of their destination,” Aframe wrote. “We decline to adopt such an interpretation.”
The panel included two Biden appointees, including Aframe, and a judge appointed by a Republican president. The 1st Circuit did reverse one piece of Murphy’s earlier ruling on procedural grounds. That portion had addressed whether the government must first attempt removal to countries the alien has ties to before resorting to a third country.
The Program the Court Targeted Has Already Removed Over 25,000 Illegal Aliens
Before this ruling landed, the Trump administration had quietly built one of the most effective deportation mechanisms in recent memory.
The administration negotiated a series of diplomatic agreements that allowed it to send more than 25,000 illegal aliens to at least 29 third countries, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First.
Third-country removals fill a gap that has plagued immigration enforcement for decades. When an illegal alien receives a final deportation order but their home country refuses to accept them, or when the alien faces legitimate danger upon return, the government historically had few options. The result was usually releasing the alien back into the country.
President Trump refused to accept that outcome. His administration locked down agreements with dozens of nations and used them aggressively.
In one of the most publicized early episodes of this litigation, eight men were removed to South Sudan rather than their home nations. They ended up in a shipping container at a US military base in Djibouti while the courts sorted out the legal question.
The Trump administration twice convinced the Supreme Court to intervene after Murphy ruled against it in earlier phases of the same case. Both times the Supreme Court stepped in and cleared the way for enforcement to continue. The administration has signaled it intends to go back to the high court again now that the 1st Circuit has backed Murphy’s core finding.
DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.
Why This Ruling Is Exactly What Open-Borders Lawyers Ordered
Let’s be clear about what this ruling actually does in practice. It hands illegal aliens who have already exhausted every legal appeal a new procedural weapon they can use to delay or derail removal. Courts have now told DHS that six hours of notice before sending someone to a third country is not enough. The administration must provide what the judges call a “meaningful opportunity” to contest the destination.
In immigration enforcement, delay is the whole game. A removal that gets pushed back a day becomes a week. A week becomes a motion. A motion becomes a hearing. A hearing becomes a new injunction. The alien stays. That pattern has played out thousands of times, and the open-borders legal apparatus knows exactly how to work it.
The Trump administration raised that point directly before the appeals court. On appeal, the administration argued that Murphy’s order, if left standing, would “usurp its authority to execute potentially thousands of valid orders of deportation to third countries.” That is not a small concern. There are illegal aliens in this country with valid, final, court-ordered removal orders who now have a fresh avenue to challenge where they go even after losing every previous legal fight.
And the activist judiciary has given it to them.
Mary L Larakers, a Justice Department lawyer, told the appeals court earlier in the litigation that “removing aliens to third countries often involves tight timing and sensitive diplomatic coordination.” She warned that giving aliens the power to delay the process threatens that coordination. The 1st Circuit heard that argument and sided with the aliens anyway.
This case carries a pattern worth recognizing. Judge Brian Murphy has tangled with the Trump administration over this same program repeatedly. The Supreme Court had to step in twice to reverse him in earlier phases. A Biden-stacked appeals panel just handed him a major vindication. The legal resistance to Trump’s deportation mandate is institutional, coordinated, and nowhere close to finished.
What voters gave Trump in 2024 was a clear mandate to restore order to a broken immigration system. Part of restoring that order means removing people who have no legal right to be here, even when their home governments make it difficult. Third-country removal is not a fringe tactic. It is a sensible, lawful response to foreign governments that refuse to cooperate with American enforcement efforts.
The fact that open-borders lawyers have successfully weaponized the federal courts to slow that process is infuriating. But the Supreme Court has already shown twice that it is willing to correct these lower courts when they overreach. The administration’s willingness to return to the high court is the right call. And given the Court’s track record in this very case, there is every reason to believe it will step in again.
The broader lesson here is one the America First movement has been learning the hard way for two years. Federal judges appointed by Democrat presidents are not neutral arbiters of the law. They are policymakers in robes, and they have made slowing Trump’s immigration agenda their project. The answer is not to accept their rulings as final. The answer is to keep fighting through every available channel until the courts with the authority to end this get their say.
The Supreme Court ended this story twice before. Round three looks like it is coming.
Sources: Reuters via Spokesman-Review; US News & World Report; CBS News; Fox News; Washington Times; Court documents, D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Case No. 1:25-cv-10676
