US judge blocks third country deportations without due process

A federal judge in Massachusetts has ruled that the Trump administration cannot deport people to “third countries” without due process, after a case in which eight migrants were removed from the United States with South Sudan as the intended destination but were instead rerouted to Djibouti, NBC News reports. Judge Brian Murphy said removals to countries not listed on a person’s final order of removal require “meaningful notice” and an opportunity to challenge the transfer, especially where there is a risk of persecution or torture.

The dispute is partly about geography and partly about throughput. A final order of removal names a country; when that country refuses to accept the person, or when documentation is incomplete, deportation becomes a logistics problem. Third‑country removals offer a shortcut: move the person to any state willing to take custody, whether or not there is a prior connection. The administration has argued it has obtained assurances from South Sudan that the eight men would not be tortured, and the White House has described those removed as “dangerous criminal illegal aliens,” according to NBC.

Murphy’s ruling treats the shortcut as a procedural end‑run. His reasoning, citing the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Convention Against Torture, is that Congress set conditions on where the government “may not remove” someone, and that those conditions are meaningless if the destination can be changed without notice. The judge framed the core question bluntly: whether the government may, without warning, deport a person to the wrong country or to a place where he is likely to be persecuted or tortured.

The policy history described by NBC shows why the fight keeps returning to court. The Supreme Court previously paused an earlier Murphy order that had temporarily blocked third‑country deportations unless migrants had a “meaningful opportunity” to raise fear‑based claims. After that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued guidance allowing removals in certain circumstances with as little as six hours’ notice. Speed requires secrecy: the fewer days between notice and removal, the fewer filings can be made, the fewer lawyers can be reached, and the less time there is to verify the destination’s promises.

That tradeoff also has a cost curve. Each procedural bypass makes the system more dependent on internal paperwork, diplomatic assurances and rapid coordination across agencies and borders. When any link fails—wrong country, missing notice, disputed risk—the state ends up litigating the shortcut itself. The removal becomes slower, not faster, and the administrative record becomes the battlefield.

The eight men at the centre of the case were not flown back to the United States. They were rerouted to Djibouti, and the legality of that detour is now the subject of a final ruling.