Seventy people were on a single deportation flight that got canceled because of a federal judge's order. Every one of them had criminal convictions.

The Supreme Court just put that flight back on the schedule.

On Tuesday, the Court ruled 6-3 to block a lower court injunction that had halted the Trump administration's policy of deporting illegal immigrants to third countries — nations other than their country of origin. The unsigned order, issued on the emergency docket, grants the administration's request to resume removals while the justices prepare to hear full oral arguments in December.

The ruling overturns a decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, a Massachusetts-based federal judge who had agreed with plaintiffs that immigrants need a "meaningful opportunity" to claim they face torture or persecution before being deported. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Murphy's ruling. The Supreme Court stepped in and said: not so fast.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in the administration's filing that putting deportations on hold "created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations" and "led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals." The Court apparently agreed.

DHS General Counsel James Percival didn't mince the celebration: "A bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike. It's not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home."

The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented. The conservative majority issued no written opinion, which is standard for emergency-docket orders.

The numbers tell the policy's story. In 2025 alone, the administration deported 15,000 people to third countries. Destination nations have included Mexico, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Eswatini. In one case the government sought to send eight men to South Sudan. The lead plaintiff in the case, identified as "D.V.D." in court records, is a Cuban national with severe mental illness who argued he'd face deportation to a country lacking psychiatric treatment.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance who represents the plaintiffs, said the ruling "means that people facing removal to third countries are once again at immediate risk of being sent to places where they have no meaningful opportunity to seek protection."

That framing — "no meaningful opportunity" — is doing a lot of work. The administration's position is that criminal aliens with final orders of removal have already exhausted their legal process. The "meaningful opportunity" standard Judge Murphy invented would effectively require a second round of hearings before every deportation to a third country, creating exactly the kind of procedural bottleneck that brought the immigration courts to a standstill under the previous administration. Sauer's brief noted the policy pause led to the inability to remove dangerous criminals. The Court's six-justice majority evidently found that consequence more urgent than Judge Murphy's new procedural requirement.

This is the third time in 2026 that the Supreme Court has sided with the administration on the emergency docket against lower court injunctions targeting immigration enforcement. The pattern is consistent: a district judge issues a nationwide injunction, an appeals court upholds it, and the Supreme Court reverses on an emergency basis. The lower courts keep swinging, and the Supreme Court keeps catching.

The December oral arguments will determine whether the policy survives permanently. The Court's term begins October 5. For now, the flights are back. Fifteen thousand deportations in 2025. Seventy criminal convictions on a single grounded flight.

The planes are moving again.