WASHINGTON, United States: President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the US Supreme Court to lift restrictions on the deportation of undocumented immigrants to third countries.
Last week, a federal appeals court broadly upheld a lower court ruling restricting a Trump administration policy of deporting undocumented migrants to countries other than their own, known as “third-country removals”.
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Late Wednesday, the appeals court lifted a stay on the initial ruling that had been in place while the appellate judges deliberated.
The US government is now urgently asking the Supreme Court to lift, until further notice, the limits on third-country removals, which it described as “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens”.
Government counsel John Sauer said the lower court ruling had “created substantial logistical problems” with removals.
Trump campaigned for president promising to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States and has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations since returning to the White House.
The Trump administration has defended third-country deportations as necessary because the home countries of some people targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.
Congress has made it US policy not to deport people to countries where their lives would be in danger or where they could be subjected to torture.
