Federal judge declared Trump administration's third-country deportation policy unlawful

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ruled on February 25, 2026 that DHS's third-country removal policy — embodied in a March 30, 2025 policy memorandum and a nearly identical July 9, 2025 ICE guidance document — violated the Administrative Procedure Act and due process. Under the policy, if the State Department received a generic diplomatic assurance from a third country that a deportee would not be persecuted or tortured there, DHS provided no further process at all before removing someone to that country, even one never designated in their immigration proceedings. Murphy's order granted the plaintiff class summary judgment on their core claims, declared the policy unlawful, vacated it nationwide, and dissolved the preliminary injunction he had issued the prior April — but he stayed his own decision for fifteen days to let the government seek appellate relief, which it did.

The case, D.V.D. v. DHS, began in March 2025 after DHS attempted to remove a named plaintiff — a pseudonymous Cuban national — and others to countries other than the ones designated in their removal orders, without notice or a chance to seek protection. Murphy certified a nationwide class and issued a preliminary injunction on April 18, 2025 requiring written notice of the destination country and a meaningful opportunity to raise a Convention Against Torture claim before any third-country removal. The injunction held for roughly two months until the case's highest-profile confrontation: on May 20, 2025, DHS attempted to fly eight men — convicted of crimes and mostly with no connection to South Sudan — to Juba in what Murphy found was a direct violation of his order. Rather than turn the plane around, DHS diverted it to a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, where the men were held for weeks in a converted shipping container that a U.S. official's own court filing described as lacking reliable electricity.

On June 23, 2025, the Supreme Court's conservative majority granted the government's emergency application to stay Murphy's injunction in a brief, unsigned order without opinion, allowing DHS to resume third-country removals while the appeal proceeded; Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, dissented, calling the majority's readiness to let deportations resume without due process a "gross abuse" of the Court's equitable discretion. When DHS argued the stay also nullified Murphy's separate remedial order protecting the Djibouti men specifically, the Supreme Court agreed in a July 3 clarification, and DHS completed the South Sudan deportation the next day — with an assistant secretary publicly celebrating the men's removal in a press statement calling them "sickos" and "barbaric criminal illegal aliens."

After Murphy's February 25, 2026 final ruling, DHS again sought and obtained emergency relief: the First Circuit continued a temporary stay on March 16, 2026 pending an expedited appeal, with merits briefing completed by April 20 and oral argument held May 13, 2026. As of this filing, the appeal remains pending and DHS continues to operate third-country removals — the same policy the district court found unlawful — under the temporary stay, more than five months after the ruling against it.