By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2026-09-25 19:05:51 | Updated at 2026-09-25 20:58:35
6 hours ago
The Trump Justice Department is taking a sledgehammer to leftist judges in Massachusetts after a late-night ambush threw federal deportation flights into chaos.
In an urgent Thursday filing, Solicitor General D. John Sauer took the case right back to the Supreme Court. He asked the justices to put on hold a Massachusetts federal judge’s ruling that strikes down the administration’s third-country deportation policy, a ruling the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals brought back late Wednesday night.
This marks the third time the Trump administration has been forced to run to the high court in this single, sprawling class-action lawsuit. Each previous time, the justices slapped down lower-court interference.
The case has been building for months. In February, a federal judge in Massachusetts declared the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country removal policy unlawful and vacated it. In March, the 1st Circuit put that ruling on hold while the government appealed. On September 18, a three-judge 1st Circuit panel largely affirmed the Massachusetts ruling.
The latest drama exploded Wednesday night, when the 1st Circuit issued an order at 11:36 p.m. dissolving its own stay. The lower-court ruling immediately snapped back into effect, even though the appeals court’s formal mandate isn’t due until at least November 9. The government was given no chance to respond.
“At 11:36 p.m. last night — without even allowing the government to respond to respondents’ motion … the 1st Circuit abruptly dissolved the stay,” Sauer wrote in the filing. He also pointed out that the court didn’t offer an explanation.
Attorney General Todd Blanche blew the whistle on social media Thursday morning, writing, “Without even allowing the government a chance to respond, and in the dark of night, a federal appeals court blocked us from conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens, an entirely legal and invaluable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration. We will immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court, which previously granted a stay in this very same case.”
Technically, the ruling doesn’t outlaw third-country removals. It requires the government to give migrants notice and a “meaningful opportunity” to raise fear-based claims before each one. The administration argues that in practice those requirements grind the process to a halt.
The fallout meant chaos for ICE deportation officers. According to DHS, the ruling forced officials to cancel a flight carrying 70 convicted criminal aliens bound for three different countries. Officers also had to pull nearly 150 migrants off removal flights to at least four separate nations. Another flight to four countries, carrying 58 people, is scheduled for later this week.
The government says the Supreme Court needs to act now to “halt that chaos.”
At the heart of the fight is a 2025 DHS policy governing deportations to “third countries,” meaning any nation not named in a migrant’s removal order. That can happen when a migrant’s home country refuses to take them back, when a migrant has won protection from being sent home, or when the designated country is no longer an option.
If the third country has given credible assurances that it won’t persecute or torture deportees, DHS can remove the migrant without further steps. If it hasn’t, the migrant gets written notice and a chance, generally 24 hours, to express a fear of being sent there. Anyone who does gets a screening interview.
The policy applies to anyone with a final removal order, criminal record or not. DHS reports 7,257 third-country removals to Mexico since January 2025. But the administration says the policy also reaches “some of the worst of the worst criminal aliens,” and DHS says 1,432 convicted criminals are awaiting third-country removal.
In a sworn declaration filed in the case, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the lower courts’ actions “will cause significant and irreparable harm to U.S. foreign policy.”
The lawsuit was brought by four migrants with final removal orders, suing on behalf of themselves and a class of others facing third-country deportation. They argue that due process entitles them to notice and a meaningful opportunity to raise fears of persecution or torture before being sent to a country they were never ordered removed to. Last year, the Massachusetts judge’s preliminary injunction required at least 10 days to raise a fear claim and 15 days to seek to reopen immigration proceedings. The Supreme Court put that injunction on hold in June 2025.
The DOJ says these activist judges are reading imaginary rights into federal law.
The administration’s message to the Supreme Court is simple. Federal law bars lower courts from issuing classwide orders that block or restrain key parts of the deportation system. This time, the district court issued a set of declarations and a vacatur rather than an injunction, and the government argues that is simply a sweeping injunction under a different label. “A court may not accomplish in two steps … what Congress has forbidden it to do in one,” the filing says.
The government also argues the risk to deportees is minimal, since fears of persecution are “notably unlikely to arise” in countries where the migrants “lack prior ties.”
DHS general counsel James Percival scoffed at claims from immigration advocates that the policy is cruel, pointing out, “What is cruel is allowing criminal illegals who can’t be sent home to stay in our communities and victimize anew. The cruelty is allowing people to remain here illegally for years, build lives, and then become political pawns for Democrats every election season. Enforcing immigration laws early is the more humane approach, before people build their futures on false promises.”
The emergency application now sits on the desk of the 1st Circuit’s overseeing judge.
