A federal judge ruled this week that the Trump administration’s policy of deporting illegal immigrants to third countries is unlawful, despite the Supreme Court allowing the policy to continue last year.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled on Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of deporting illegal immigrants to countries other than their own is “not fine, nor is it legal.” Murphy ruled it is unlawful for the administration to deport illegal immigrants to third countries without notice or an opportunity to object to where they are being sent.
His ruling sets up another possible clash between lower court judges and the high court. The justices have already ruled against him twice in this case alone.
“According to its new policy, issued on March 30, 2025, immigration officers need not give notice or any opportunity to object before removing someone to an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous country, as long as the Government has generally received ‘assurances’ that no persecution or torture will happen there,” Murphy wrote.
“This new policy—which purports to stand in for the protections Congress has mandated—fails to satisfy due process for a raft of reasons, not least of which is that nobody really knows anything about these purported ‘assurances,’” Murphy said. “Whom do they cover? What do they cover? Why has the Government deemed them credible? How can anyone even know for certain that they exist? These are basic questions that the Constitution permits a person to ask before the Government takes away their last and only lifeline.”
Murphy said his ruling would not take effect for 15 days to allow for the Trump administration to seek an appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The case before Murphy has already hit the Supreme Court’s emergency docket and could return there again should the First Circuit deny a stay pending appeal.
The Supreme Court previously lifted Murphy’s preliminary injunction blocking the third-country deportation policy in June 2025, issuing a 6-3 unsigned order that did not elaborate on the rationale behind the majority’s decision.
When Murphy still tried to enforce another order that built off the one the Supreme Court lifted — this one blocking the deportation of eight criminal illegal immigrants to South Sudan — the court rebuked him in a 7-2 unsigned order. Justice Elena Kagan was the lone justice who opposed the initial stay order but switched to join the majority in blocking enforcement of Murphy’s second order, saying she did “not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.”
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While the Justice Department pointed to the Supreme Court’s previous interventions in the preliminary stages of the case, Murphy said in his Wednesday ruling that relying on that record would “gloss over the case’s many unsettled issues and the material differences between last year’s preliminary injunction and the ultimate relief now sought.”
The ruling marks another adverse opinion for the Trump administration’s deportation agenda in lower courts, even as it has seen several key victories in federal appeals courts and the Supreme Court.