Admin Turns to SCOTUS Over Deportations09/25 06:38

   A ruling to halt deportations of people to countries other than their own 
threw a core immigration policy of the Trump administration into question, at 
least temporarily, and prompted a desperate appeal to the Supreme Court on 
Thursday.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- A ruling to halt deportations of people to countries 
other than their own threw a core immigration policy of the Trump 
administration into question, at least temporarily, and prompted a desperate 
appeal to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

   The administration said the ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
came Wednesday just minutes before midnight, forcing the cancellation of a 
flight with 70 people that was headed to three countries. It said justices 
needed to step in to "halt that chaos" and said the flight cancellation 
"required a new round of diplomatic engagement with each of the three 
countries," which it did not name.

   Plaintiffs for immigrants sought emergency relief from the appeals court 
Wednesday night, saying they heard from "multiple sources" that a deportation 
flight was scheduled the next day from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Burundi, 
Rwanda and the Central African Republic.

   Within hours of that request, the appeals court said it was clarifying a 
ruling against the policy last week and said a previous order allowing flights 
to continue while legal challenges play out was no longer in effect.

   Administration officials reacted furiously. Attorney General Todd Blanche 
said the order "in the dark of night" robbed authorities of "an entirely legal 
and valuable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration."

   The justices 
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-immigration-trump-south-sudan-c7ffbbced
e3158a3352b2dbf4439780a the deportation flights to temporarily continue when 
the case came before them last year.

   The vast majority of people deported to countries other than their own have 
been sent to Mexico, but under a series of often-secret agreements, the 
administration has deported thousands of others to more than two dozen 
countries, from Liberia to Guyana.

   Some have found themselves in countries they'd never heard of before their 
arrivals and 
https://apnews.com/article/asylum-seekers-deported-africa-f37fb971a2f463a96bdde4
911feefc7a Some also face serious safety risks, and are left with little choice 
except to return to the home countries they were fleeing.

   This month, lawyers for two men deported to Equatorial Guinea said they were 
https://apnews.com/article/africa-equitorial-guinea-migrants-us-arrests-bde51c87
4fd76b503e04a09ffc7baa98 in a hotel-turned-detention center by police who 
covered their heads with bags.

   Trump's Republican administration has said that it sends people with final 
deportation orders to third countries when their homelands won't accept them or 
they can't be returned there. Those governments provide assurances that people 
won't be persecuted or tortured, attorneys said.

   James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, said 
Wednesday on X that 25,000 people in the U.S. illegally have been deported to 
third countries, calling those deportations "an essential public safety tool."

   The lower court order doesn't completely prohibit third-country 
deportations, but it requires the government give people a 
https://apnews.com/article/south-sudan-deportation-supreme-court-judge-murphy-14
8cee2906dc7286b074116d3eec6fd4.

   The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to halt that decision, 
arguing it would force unreasonable delays and the reworking of agreements with 
foreign countries.

   "The order below would again obstruct DHS from efficiently removing aliens 
... by inordinately delaying third-country removal for any alien who voices a 
fear of persecution or torture in that country, no matter how frivolous or 
belated the claim," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.

   The appeal comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump 
administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living 
in the United States illegally.