First Circuit rules migrants must get notice before deportation to third countries

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Trump administration cannot keep deporting migrants to countries they have no connection to without first giving them notice and a chance to argue they would face persecution or torture there, dealing a setback to one of the administration's signature immigration enforcement tools ahead of the midterm elections.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in a 55-page opinion in D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, largely affirmed a February ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy that had declared the Department of Homeland Security's "third-country removal" guidance unlawful. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Seth Aframe rejected the government's position that migrants with no advance word of their destination have little practical ability to contest being sent there.

What the court found

The case centers on DHS policy documents issued in March and July of 2025 that let immigration officers deport people with final removal orders to countries never named in their original proceedings, so long as the receiving country gave the State Department a general diplomatic assurance against persecution or torture. Under that guidance, migrants sent to a country that had provided such assurances got no notice at all before removal; those sent to a country that had not typically got only about 24 hours.

The court held that reading violates the notice-and-hearing protections built into the Immigration and Nationality Act and regulations tied to the Convention Against Torture, which Congress incorporated into U.S. law through the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. In the panel's words:

"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 court also rejected DHS's argument that its own regulations leave room for a "more streamlined" process for third-country cases, writing that "the statute and regulations prescribe hearing-related procedures for fear-based claims with no exception for third-country removals," and that the government could not "create such an exception from whole cloth."

The panel did hand DHS one win: it threw out, on standing grounds, a separate part of Murphy's order requiring the government to first attempt removal to a migrant's designated country or country of citizenship before trying a third country. The four named plaintiffs, the court found, hadn't shown they were personally harmed by that "sequencing" practice, so that piece of the judgment was vacated. Everything else — the notice and hearing requirements, and the vacatur of the guidance itself — was affirmed.

By the numbers

• More than 25,000 migrants have been deported to third countries since the policy took effect, according to figures cited in reporting on the case.
• Removals have gone to roughly two dozen countries, with the large majority sent to Mexico, though the administration has also struck deportation arrangements with African nations including Liberia, Ghana, the Central African Republic and Sierra Leone.
• The guidance at issue contemplated as little as 24 hours' notice, or none, before a person could be put on a flight to a country not listed in their removal order.

How the case got here

Four noncitizens — identified in court papers only as D.V.D., M.M., E.F.D. and O.C.G. — filed the lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court in March 2025 as a class action after ICE issued an internal directive ordering officers to review noncitizens who had already won protection from removal to their home countries and evaluate whether they could instead be sent elsewhere. Murphy quickly certified a nationwide class and granted a preliminary injunction; DHS appealed and the fight twice reached the Supreme Court, which stayed the injunction in mid-2025 while the appeal proceeded — over a dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, who argued the government had already violated an earlier order by trying to fly eight men to South Sudan without a hearing.

After the First Circuit remanded the case in February 2026, Murphy issued a final judgment holding the guidance unlawful on three grounds: the sequencing issue the appeals court has now trimmed, the failure to provide notice and a hearing for fear-of-persecution claims, and the failure to do so for fear-of-torture claims. Friday's ruling affirmed the latter two and left the guidance vacated as a matter of administrative law.

Who is affected

The class covers noncitizens with final removal orders who have been or will be deported, on or after February 18, 2025, to a country not named in their removal order or identified in writing during their immigration proceedings. The opinion recounts one class member, identified as O.C.G., who had won a court order barring his removal to Guatemala because he was likely to be persecuted there — but was instead deported to Mexico, which in turn sent him back to Guatemala, a sequence advocates call "chain refoulement." News accounts of the broader deportation program have also described migrants flown to the Central African Republic without being told their destination until hours into the flight, with one deportee telling reporters, "I feel kidnapped. They have violated all the rights that exist in life."

Reaction

Trina Realmuto of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which represents the plaintiffs along with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First, said the ruling "confirms that due process and the protections Congress enacted against persecution and torture cannot be circumvented" through third-country removals. DHS did not immediately issue a public statement responding to the decision, though the department's general counsel indicated the administration intends to keep pursuing third-country removals within whatever bounds the courts ultimately allow. Amicus briefs on the government's side came from the Federation for American Immigration Reform; the plaintiffs drew support from the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Human Rights Watch and several immigrant-rights legal groups, according to the opinion's counsel listing.

Coverage of the ruling from ABC News, CBS News and Al Jazeera noted that the panel that decided against the administration included two judges appointed under Democratic presidents and one appointed under a Republican president, and that the ruling comes after the Supreme Court had already intervened twice on DHS's behalf earlier in the litigation.

What happens next

The Trump administration is widely expected to ask the Supreme Court to intervene again, either through an emergency stay application or a petition for full review, given that the justices have already paused lower-court orders in this case on two prior occasions. Unless and until a higher court acts, DHS must provide class members with effective notice of an intended third-country destination and a meaningful opportunity to raise a fear of persecution or torture there before carrying out a removal. The First Circuit left open — and declined to resolve — a separate question the government raised about whether that opportunity must include a full evidentiary hearing before removal, telling the parties to take that dispute back to Judge Murphy in Boston if it becomes a live issue.