The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to continue its program to deport immigrants to countries other than their own.
Administration lawyers filed an emergency application to the justices after a lower federal court on Wednesday upheld a block on the government’s program, finding that people could not be deported without being given a chance to contest their cases.
In the emergency application, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to allow the administration to continue the deportations, calling the effort “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency applications from the appeals court that blocked the program, asked the challengers to respond by Monday at 4 p.m.
The third-country deportations have been criticized because the Trump administration has sent immigrants to countries with histories of human rights abuses. Reporting by The New York Times has shown that foreign detainees in the African country of Equatorial Guinea were hooded, bound and beaten by police in a hotel for U.S. deportees from other countries.
But Mr. Sauer argued that the court intervention halting the program had been “unexpected” and had “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations.” He said the administration had been forced to cancel deportation flights, which had been costly and could lead to diplomatic entanglements — not to mention making it difficult to deport people who he said were “dangerous criminals.”
The emergency application is the latest in a flurry of court actions about the controversial policy, which the Trump administration has used to swiftly deport immigrants, avoiding rules that bar certain people from being returned to their home countries, particularly those who fear persecution or torture.
Earlier this week, James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security, said on social media that more than 25,000 people had been deported under the program.
The block on the policy by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit had sent Trump administration officials scrambling, according to reporting by The Times.
Immediately after the ruling, officials removed immigrants from flights bound to several third countries, including Costa Rica, Honduras and the Central African Republic.
In the emergency filing to the justices, Mr. Sauer told the court that the block by the appeals court had led the Department of Homeland Security to cancel a flight to three separate countries carrying 70 immigrants. He asserted that the cancellation had “required a new round of diplomatic engagement with each of the three countries.”
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