Supreme Court takes up fight over Trump’s third-country illegal alien deportation policy

By Fox News · Fox News

The Supreme Court on Tuesday handed the Trump administration an interim victory in its ongoing immigration crackdown, clearing the way for officials to continue deporting illegal aliens to third countries while the justices consider a legal challenge to the policy. The justices granted the administration 's request to stay a February ruling from a federal district court in Massachusetts that imposed additional procedural requirements before illegal immigrants could be removed to countries other than their own. The high court also agreed to hear the administration's challenge, treating its emergency application as a petition for review and ordering the parties to prepare for arguments during the court's December session. FEDERAL APPEALS COURT DEALS BLOW TO TRUMP DEPORTATION AGENDA Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have denied the administration's request for a stay. The decision gives the administration the immediate relief it sought as it presses ahead with third-country removals , even as the Supreme Court has yet to decide whether the policy remains. The dispute centers on the Trump administration's efforts to remove illegal aliens to third countries . Lower courts have not categorically prohibited those removals but have required procedures intended to give aliens an opportunity to raise claims that they could face persecution or torture in the destination country. The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court last week, arguing that those requirements were interfering with its ability to carry out removals and disrupting sensitive diplomatic negotiations with countries willing to accept deportees . TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S IMMIGRATION PUSH FUELS ICE'S BIGGEST ARREST MONTH IN AGENCY HISTORY "The order below also undermines our standing abroad," the administration argued in its filing, according to the ruling. "Finding third countries willing and able to accept aliens is a delicate diplomatic endeavor." The gov…