WASHINGTON, Sept 24 (Reuters) – The Trump administration will appeal to the US Supreme Court a lower court ruling rejecting a policy that allowed authorities to rapidly deport migrants to countries other than their own, US Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday.
“Without even allowing the government a chance to respond, and in the dark of night, a federal appeals court blocked us from conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens, an entirely legal and invaluable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration,” he wrote on in an X post.
“We will immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court, which previously granted a stay in this very same case.”
Under President Donald Trump, the administration has entered into a series of agreements that have allowed it to send more than 25,000 migrants to at least 29 third countries, in many cases Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First.
A US federal appeals court rejected policy on Friday.
A three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston largely upheld a February decision by a lower court that declared the Department of Homeland Security’s policy unlawful.
The ruling came in a class action lawsuit filed by migrants subject to deportation orders that has become a key test of what due-process protections the government must provide before removing people to countries with which they have no connection.
(Reporting by Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
