A federal appeals court on Friday struck down a Trump administration policy enabling rapid third-country deportations, under which immigration authorities could send migrants quickly to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to raise concerns about their safety. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a February ruling from a lower court that had found the Department of Homeland Security policy unlawful, according to Reuters.

The decision is the latest legal clash between the courts and the White House, following a separate fight this week over media access restrictions at the White House. It also sets up another likely showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court, which has already intervened twice in the same dispute. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of migrants facing removal to countries that were never named in their deportation orders or discussed in their immigration court proceedings, per Reuters reporting carried by SRN News.

What the judges decided

The appeals court affirmed most of the earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy. In February, Murphy had concluded that the third-country deportation policy, adopted in March 2025 as part of the administration's immigration crackdown, failed to protect migrants' due process rights and could send them with little or no notice to unfamiliar and potentially dangerous places.

The panel reasoned that a person's right to challenge removal to a specific country over fear of persecution has little practical meaning without advance notice of the destination and a genuine opportunity to fight it. Under the DHS policy, officials could send a migrant to a third country without any warning at all if that country had given the State Department blanket assurances that deportees would not be persecuted or tortured. In cases without such assurances, the policy called for at least some notice.

Critics argued the diplomatic assurances were a thin substitute for due process. The court's opinion lands on the side of that view, holding that notice and a meaningful chance to contest the destination are required, not optional, according to Devdiscourse's summary of the Reuters reporting.

How far the policy reached

The ruling affects a program with enormous scale. Since President Trump took office, the administration struck a series of agreements that allowed it to send more than 25,000 migrants to at least 29 third countries, often Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First.

Some removals spanned continents. CBS News reported that deportees from Latin America were dropped thousands of miles from their countries of origin in sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier in the same legal battle, the administration twice convinced the Supreme Court to lift protections ordered by Murphy, clearing the way for eight men to be deported to South Sudan. The new ruling does not undo those removals, but it bars future third-country deportations without advance notice and a genuine chance to object.

Lawyers for the migrants welcomed the decision. Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, who represented the plaintiffs, said the ruling confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be sidestepped by putting someone on a plane to a country that played no role in their removal proceedings, per the Devdiscourse report.

What comes next

The dispute is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court again. The administration had signaled before Friday's decision that it was willing to return to the high court if the First Circuit upheld Murphy's ruling, and the case is now a defining test of how much process the government owes people before removing them to countries where they have no ties.

For now, the administration is treating the policy as still in force. DHS General Counsel James Percival wrote on X late Friday that the third-country deportation program continues because the First Circuit's ruling is not currently in effect. DHS itself did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision, Reuters reported.

For migrants in the system, the ruling could restore a measure of predictability: advance notice of where they are being sent and a real chance to object before boarding a plane. Whether that standard survives will depend on the justices, who have sided with the administration twice before in this same fight.