# Third-Country Removal **Third-country removal** is deportation to a country that is neither the person's country of citizenship nor the one designated in their removal order, under 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2)(E)(vii) — "another country whose government will accept the alien." The second Trump administration made it a standing policy by DHS guidance in February–March 2025, providing notice and a fear screening only where the destination country had given no diplomatic assurance against persecution or torture. **Litigation.** In *D.V.D. v. DHS* (D. Mass., Judge Brian Murphy) a nationwide class won an injunction on April 18, 2025; the Supreme Court stayed it on June 23, 2025 in an unsigned order over a dissent by Justice Sotomayor; the district court entered final judgment setting the policy aside on February 25, 2026; and the First Circuit stayed that judgment pending an expedited appeal. The removals continued throughout that stay. **The First Circuit decided that appeal on September 18, 2026, against the government.** A three-judge panel — two Biden appointees and one Republican appointee — largely upheld the district court, holding that the policy of rapid removal to unrelated countries is unlawful because migrants must get what Circuit Judge Seth Aframe called a "meaningful" chance to raise safety concerns before they are deported. The class is represented by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance. **The administration kept flying, then went to the Supreme Court a third time.** Between the judgment and the mandate, the Justice Department took the position that because the First Circuit had not yet issued its **mandate** — the formal notification to the district court — the March 16, 2026 stay remained in force and removals could continue. The plaintiffs moved on an emergency basis, and **late on Wednesday, September 23, 2026** the First Circuit answered in three sentences: > [!quote] First Circuit clarification order, September 23, 2026 > "Consistent with this court's September 18, 2026, Judgment, the March 16, 2026, stay pending appeal is dissolved." Flight-tracking reporting places an ICE charter in Ghana and Liberia on **September 24** and another arriving at Guantanamo Bay in the early hours of the same day, after the clarification issued. Then on **Thursday, September 24, 2026**, Solicitor General **[[D. John Sauer]]** filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to let the rapid removals resume — the government's **third** trip to the Court in this same case. Sauer argued the government had been denied a chance to respond before the clarification issued, and asked for an immediate administrative stay "to halt that chaos" while the Court considered the application. The First Circuit's dissolution of the stay also forced the cancellation of a flight carrying about **70** people to three countries and a fresh round of diplomacy with the receiving governments. **The Supreme Court let the removals resume on September 29, 2026.** In *Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D.* (No. 26A406), the Court granted the government's application and stayed the district court's classwide judgment, with no explanation, over the dissents of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson. It also granted certiorari (No. 26-426) and set argument for December 9, 2026. The questions to be argued are district-court jurisdiction, the authority for classwide relief and APA vacatur, and whether the third-country guidance violates 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b), due process or international law. Until the Court rules on the merits, the policy the First Circuit held unlawful remains in force. This is the third time the Court has unblocked it without a written explanation. > [!warning] Quoted cost language is from HCR's rendering of the application > [[Heather Cox Richardson]]'s letter of September 24 renders Sauer as writing that disruption of the administration's "plans…imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption." The substance — cost and renewed diplomacy as the asserted injury — is independently reported; that exact sentence is matched only to her letter and has not been checked against the filed application. **Destinations** reported by press and NGOs (not by DHS): El Salvador's CECOT (the [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia CECOT]] flights of March 15, 2025); Eswatini (at least 30 people in four batches by July 2026; a Human Rights Watch review of the agreement found a commitment to accept up to 160 for $5.1 million); Ghana (agreement September 2025); Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan; Costa Rica and Panama early in 2025. "Asylum Cooperative Agreement" countries were listed as the first country of removal in roughly 30,700 pretermitted asylum cases by June 2026 (Mobile Pathways). ## The Office of Remigration *Full page: [[Office of Remigration]].* The money and the diplomacy behind these removals run through a **State Department office named for a white-nationalist term of art.** "Remigration" is the European far right's word for the mass expulsion of racial minorities and immigrants; see [[Remigration]]. The office was created in the 2025 State Department reorganization — [[Marco Rubio]] set it out in a **May 29, 2025** press statement, "Next Steps on Building an America First State Department" — and sits inside the [[Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]] under the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Migration Matters. That placement is the whole story in one line: the bureau built to resettle refugees now houses the office that expels them. > [!warning] Sourcing — the program's financials rest on one investigation > The figures in the next paragraph come from a single *Washington Post* investigation (David Nakamura and Adam Taylor, September 21, 2026), carried since by aggregators rather than corroborated by independent reporting. The **existence, placement and creation date** of the office are confirmed against the State Department's own May 2025 announcement; the **dollar amounts and counts are not** independently confirmed. Attributed, not asserted. Per that reporting: the office has pledged **at least $410 million** to third-country arrangements, including roughly **$81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments**, with the rest routed through intermediary agencies. More than **25,000 people** have been sent to at least **28 countries**, largely in Africa and Latin America, under deals pledged with **31** countries in all. Deputy chief of staff [[Stephen Miller]] ordered the deals; a State Department official secured them. A former department official who resigned over the policy described the design as wanting "fast money, with no strings attached," specifically to circumvent congressional notification that money was going to governments known to be corrupt. The mechanism the money buys is a loophole: a receiving country either imprisons the person or returns them to the home country the United States is legally barred from sending them to. The stated aim is deterrence by fear — that people already here self-deport and others do not come. ## See also - [[Immigration Removal Pipeline]] — Bypass G - [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia]] · [[Kilmar Abrego Garcia CECOT]] · [[Alien Enemies Act]] · [[Convention Against Torture]] - [[D. John Sauer]] · [[Supreme Court of the United States]] · [[ICE]] · [[Department of Homeland Security]] - [[Remigration]] · [[Office of Remigration]] · [[Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration]] · [[Stephen Miller]] · [[Marco Rubio]]