A federal appeals court order that bars the United States from deporting immigrants to countries never mentioned in their removal cases is now in force, and the Trump administration has taken the fight to the Supreme Court.
The sequence ran over one week. On September 18, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, largely upheld a district court decision from February and vacated the Department of Homeland Security policy known as third-country removal. On September 24 the same court dissolved the stay it had granted on March 16, which had allowed the policy to keep operating while the appeal was pending. On September 25 the government filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to pause the ruling.
What the court required
The policy at issue allowed DHS to send people with final removal orders to a country other than the one they came from, without telling them where they were going. The appeals court held that this cannot be done in the dark: before such a removal, a person must receive effective notice of the intended destination and a meaningful opportunity to say they fear persecution or torture there.
The reasoning, as summarized by Human Rights First, is that the department "cannot evade protections against persecution and torture by simply changing the deportation destination." The case, D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, covers a nationwide class of noncitizens with final removal orders who were sent, or faced being sent, to countries never identified during their immigration proceedings. Many had already won protection against being returned to their own countries precisely because of the risk of persecution or torture there.
What the government argues
In its filing in Washington, the administration contends that DHS may carry out these removals when the receiving country offers credible assurances that the person will not be persecuted or tortured, and that the lower courts have imposed procedures beyond what federal law requires. It also points out that thousands of people have already been transferred under the policy. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on September 24 that the government would appeal.
The week the order was tested
The dispute over timing was not academic. The Justice Department initially argued that removals could continue until the appeals court issued its formal mandate — the paperwork that closes a case. The court rejected that reading on September 24, stating that the stay was dissolved and the ban applied at once.
Reporting by The American Prospect found that charter flights appeared to keep operating in Africa after the ruling, and that a Peruvian man whom DHS sought to send to the Central African Republic obtained protection from removal once the decision landed.
For readers in Brazil and Spanish-speaking Latin America, the practical stake is narrow but real: the case is about whether someone ordered removed from the United States can learn, and contest, the name of the country they are being put on a plane to.
Reporting from JURIST, Human Rights First, The American Prospect, and Colorado Politics.
