A deportation flight carrying 70 people never left the ground this week — and now the fight over where the Trump administration can send migrants who aren't wanted in their home countries is back at the Supreme Court for the third time in 15 months.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled just before midnight Wednesday, dissolving a lower-court stay and effectively reinstating a Boston federal judge's order that migrants must get a real chance to argue they'd be tortured or persecuted before being shipped to a "third country" — one that isn't their homeland and wasn't named in their original removal order. The ruling forced the cancellation of a flight scheduled to depart Alexandria, Louisiana, for Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.

By Thursday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer had filed an emergency application asking the justices to freeze that order immediately. The case — docketed at the Supreme Court as DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26A406 — marks the government's third trip to the high court over the same policy since a Massachusetts lawsuit challenging it was filed in spring 2025.

"An Essential Tool," Government Says

Sauer argued the appeals court's order would "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." Attorney General Todd Blanche was blunter, complaining the ruling landed "in the dark of night" and stripped the administration of what he called an essential tool against illegal immigration.

"IN THE DARK OF NIGHT" — ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE ON THE MIDNIGHT RULING

DHS General Counsel James Percival said the roughly 25,000 people the administration has deported to more than two dozen third countries since last year represent "an essential public safety tool," insisting most removals still go smoothly and the vast majority of third-country deportees end up in Mexico. Immigrant-rights attorneys, including lawyers with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance who have fought the policy since it began, say the paperwork protections at stake are what stand between deportees and being dropped into countries where they've alleged they could be beaten, jailed or worse — advocates have pointed to two men sent to Equatorial Guinea who said they were held at gunpoint after arrival.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who fields emergency appeals from the 1st Circuit, isn't rushing the government's request. She's given challengers until 4 p.m. Monday to respond before any decision on an administrative stay. The full Supreme Court allowed similar removals to proceed on an emergency basis back in June 2025, but this fresh request tests whether that leeway survives a more detailed lower-court record — and whether flights to some of the world's most unstable countries resume by next week.