The Trump administration has been putting people on planes to countries they have never lived in — Eswatini, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia — and leaving them there. Lower courts said it couldn't do that without warning people first and letting them say whether they'd be in danger.
On Tuesday, September 29, the Supreme Court let the administration keep going anyway.
What the Court did
In a one-page order, the justices granted President Donald Trump's emergency request to continue what are called "third-country" deportations: sending immigrants not back to their home country, but to some other nation the United States has made a deal with.
The order put on hold a lower court ruling that had required the administration to give people facing one of these deportations notice, and a chance to raise the fear that they could be persecuted or tortured where they were being sent. With that ruling paused, the Department of Homeland Security can keep deporting people without advance notice, The Washington Sun reported.
The Court did not decide whether the policy is legal. It will hear arguments in December. Until then, the deportations continue.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the administration's request.
It's not the first time. The Washington Sun noted the Court has now "again backed" these removals.
Who gets sent where
These aren't deportations home. They are deportations to somewhere.
Writing in The Intercept the same day, Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien put the number of people whose lives have been upended by third-country deportations at more than 25,000 — sent to places where they have "no connections and few rights." The countries he named include Palau, Eswatini, Burundi, Rwanda, the Central African Republic, Libya and South Sudan — some as destinations, some as places the administration tried or threatened to send people. The administration has deals with at least 35 countries, often trading aid or other payments for taking people in.
Some of the people sent end up in indefinite detention in African countries, The Washington Sun reported. Others are simply stranded.
The challengers told the Court what the policy has already done: people detained, assaulted, and forced back to countries the U.S. itself had previously protected them from. "These harms cannot be undone," they said.
"The point is to scare people"
One of the administration's own officials has said what this is for. The Intercept quotes a Trump administration official, as recorded in a report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
"The point is to scare people. With countries like Palau or Eswatini, the point is that the Administration can threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere."
DHS General Counsel James Percival's reaction to Tuesday's order, posted on X: "A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike."
But the lower courts, the challengers' lawyers told the Court, never barred the deportations. What they required was that people be told — and get a chance to say, before the plane took off, that the country on the ticket might torture them. That's what the administration asked the Supreme Court to take away, and that's what it got.
The cheering section
Sending people to a country that isn't theirs has had cheerleaders in Congress before. When 60 Minutes reported it could find no criminal record for 75% of the men the administration sent to a prison in El Salvador, Jeff Crank wrote a resolution supporting Trump for sending them.
What we know
On September 29, 2026, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's emergency request to keep deporting immigrants to countries where they have no ties, pausing a lower court order that required the government to warn them first and let them raise fears of torture or persecution. Three justices dissented. More than 25,000 people have already been sent to third countries, including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, and an administration official has described the point as "to scare people." The Court will hear arguments in December on whether any of it is legal.
