A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Trump administration's policy of rapidly deporting migrants to countries other than their own, ruling that people facing removal must get a genuine opportunity to warn officials it could get them tortured or killed.

The three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston largely upheld a February 2026 lower-court decision that had already found the Department of Homeland Security's so-called third-country removal policy unlawful. Writing for the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Seth Aframe said migrants must be given a "meaningful" chance to raise safety concerns before being put on a plane to a nation that had nothing to do with their case.

Since the policy took effect in March 2025, the administration has struck deals with at least 29 countries and sent more than 25,000 migrants to third countries, most of them to Mexico. In one especially contested episode, eight men were flown to South Sudan after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's injunction blocking the practice.

What The Ruling Actually Changes

The case began as a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of migrants who said they were given little or no notice of where they were being sent, leaving them no real chance to object before removal. Aframe's opinion sided with that argument, writing that "DHS's proposed interpretation would deny access to that protection to a substantial swath of noncitizens who are sent to third countries with no notice of their destination." The panel included two Biden appointees, Aframe among them, and one judge appointed by a Republican president, according to Reuters.

Congress has long barred the government from deporting people to places where they would likely face persecution or torture, and the ruling turns on how much warning and process migrants are owed before that promise can be tested. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, called the decision a check on a policy they say was designed to move fast and avoid scrutiny.

"This decision confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented by putting someone on a plane to a country that was never part of their removal proceedings."

That's how Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance described the outcome, per reporting from Al Jazeera. The Department of Homeland Security has defended the policy as necessary when a migrant's home country refuses to take them back, arguing courts shouldn't slow down removals of people who are in the country illegally.

This is not the policy's first trip through the courts, and it likely won't be its last. The Supreme Court has already intervened twice on third-country removals, both times siding with the administration on emergency requests to let deportations continue while litigation played out, as Arab News notes. Legal observers expect the administration to again ask the justices to intervene, setting up a fresh test of how much process is due before the government can send someone to a country they've never set foot in.

For now, the Boston ruling stands as the most detailed judicial statement yet on what notice and opportunity migrants must be given, and it will shape how lower courts handle pending third-country cases while the fight over the policy's ultimate legality continues.