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A federal appeals court ruled Friday that U.S. immigration officials must offer detainees “a meaningful opportunity to contest” any deportation to countries where they have no ties.
The ruling by the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit marks a setback for the Trump administration’s controversial “third-country” deportation policy, which has dropped off some migrants thousands of miles from their country of origin — in some cases sending deportees who hailed from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa.
The appellate court largely upheld a lower court order finding that policy illegal, ruling against Department of Homeland Security rules that allow federal immigration officials to send deportees to so-called “third countries” with little to no notice or opportunity to challenge their deportation.
The DHS policy in question, enacted last year, gave officials the power to send migrants to a third country without giving them any notice if that nation gave the State Department blanket assurances that it would not persecute or torture the deportees. In cases in which third countries do not make such assurances, the policy instructs officials to give detainees some notice.
The appeals court affirmed, for the most part, a ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy, who has repeatedly rebuked the administration’s third-country deportation campaign on the basis that it has violated deportees’ due process rights.
“An individual’s right to contest removal to a country based on a fear of persecution in that country means little if one does not receive prior notice of the intended removal destination and a meaningful opportunity to contest that destination,” the appeals court panel wrote.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, one of the groups that sued over the policy, said the First Circuit “clearly held that the government cannot evade protections against persecution and torture by simply changing the deportation destination.”
“For over a year, many class members [have] been deported to countries they had never been told they could be removed to, with little or no notice and without a meaningful opportunity to explain the dangers awaiting them there,” said Trina Realmuto, the group’s executive director.
DHS General Counsel James Percival said on X late Friday: “The third country deportation policy continues, as the First Circuit’s ruling is not currently in effect. If you claim fear in your home country, DHS has the right to send you elsewhere.”
Friday’s ruling will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court. But it is nonetheless a significant legal defeat for an intensifying part of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
His administration has brokered third-country deportation agreements with more than 30 nations across the globe, including African countries like Liberia. In some cases, deportees are sent to a third country because a court order protects them from being sent to their country of origin, but does not bar the government from deporting them altogether.
More than 25,000 migrants have been deported to third countries under the Trump administration, around 80% of whom have been sent to Mexico, according to one advocacy group.
CBS News reported earlier this week on a group of deportees who were flown to Liberia last month, including citizens of countries in South and Central America — like Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela — and people from other parts of Africa. The migrants, who are living in a hotel, said they were not notified by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they would be removed to Liberia, and weren’t given the chance to challenge their deportation to West Africa.
“I’m concerned,” Honduran native Elvis Rodriguez Venturas told CBS News. “I feel far away, on the other side of the world.”
