The administration of President Donald Trump made an emergency appeal this Thursday to the Supreme Court of the United States to attempt to lift the judicial restrictions that are hindering the rapid deportations of immigrants to countries other than their own, after an order from the First Circuit forced the government to cancel a flight with 70 individuals.
According to reporting from The Associated Press, the administration requested that the judges immediately suspend the orders from lower courts which require providing immigrants with an effective opportunity to contest before being sent to a country different from the one previously established in their immigration processes.
The Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed this Thursday the filing of the appeal. "We have just submitted an emergency stay request to the Supreme Court. As I mentioned, we are seeking relief immediately," he wrote on his account on X.
Blanche added that the opposing party will have until Monday to respond to the government's request.
The new intervention by the Supreme Court was requested after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued an order shortly before midnight on Wednesday, September 23.
According to the administration's explanation, that decision forced them to cancel a scheduled flight for this Thursday with 70 people who have criminal convictions who were to be sent to three countries.
The government also stated that the cancellation forced the initiation of a new round of diplomatic efforts with each of the recipient nations.
The administration did not publicly identify those three destinations. However, the immigrants' lawyers had requested an urgent intervention hours earlier after receiving information from several sources about a flight scheduled from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Burundi, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic.
Hours after that request, the First Circuit clarified that an earlier order allowing flights to continue while the litigation was ongoing was no longer in effect.
Blanche harshly criticized the decision and argued that it deprived the authorities of a tool that the government considers legal for implementing its immigration policy.
The dispute originates from a court ruling regarding the guarantees that immigrants must receive prior to a deportation to a third country.
The ruling does not absolutely prohibit those transfers, but it requires that the affected individuals receive effective notification and a meaningful opportunity to argue that they could face persecution or torture in the country to which they will be sent.
On September 18, the First Circuit upheld essentially the decision of federal judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts against the policy implemented by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In its 55-page ruling, the court established that DHS must provide those affected with effective notice of the third country to which it intends to deport them and a meaningful opportunity to contest that destination by claiming a reasonable fear of persecution or torture.
The court upheld those procedural guarantees, although it rejected another part of the lower court's decision that required the government to first attempt to deport immigrants to certain countries before resorting to third states.
For the Trump administration, the new judicial demands could lead to successive delays and require modifications to agreements made with foreign governments.
«The government has been able to deport thousands of foreigners to third countries in recent months, and thousands more are eligible for those deportations,» wrote the Attorney General of the United States before the Supreme Court, D. John Sauer, in the request submitted this Thursday.
The administration insists that it resorts to third countries when it cannot quickly return certain individuals to their places of origin and claims that the receiving governments provide guarantees that the deported will not face persecution or torture.
According to AP, most of the people deported to countries other than their own have been sent to Mexico, although thousands of migrants have been relocated to more than two dozen countries through various agreements reached by Washington.
Judicial challenges to these procedures continue. Last Friday, a federal judge in Colorado ordered the administration to return the Honduran Bryan Omar Sánchez to the United States, who had been deported on July 29 to the Central African Republic.
Judge Regina M. Rodríguez ordered that Sánchez be returned and released once in the United States. The Honduran had a pending asylum application and was under protection from the Convention Against Torture when he was sent to Africa.
Politics has also affected Cuban citizens. In early September, several Cubans deported by the United States to African countries reported months of detention, untreated illnesses, weight loss, family separation, and uncertainty about their immigration status.
Among them are Cubans sent to Eswatini and the Central African Republic, while other nationals from the island have also been relocated to countries such as Liberia and Equatorial Guinea.
Este caso forma parte de una disputa legal más amplia sobre las deportaciones a terceros países. Sigue todos los detalles y novedades en nuestra sección de
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