On June 23, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision in the case DHS v. DVD. The ruling allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to start deporting people with final removal orders to third countries—places they’re not from—without giving them a meaningful chance to fight it while a legal case about this practice continues. That legal case could take years to finish. For now, this means DHS can send noncitizens to countries not listed on their deportation orders, even if they’ve never been there before and could face harm or torture, with little or no opportunity to ask for protection.
“Third country removals” is the practice of DHS deporting a person to a country other than their country of origin or any country that was listed as a possible country of removal during their immigration court removal proceedings. These third country removals can happen if a person is ordered removed, but the country designated for their deportation will not allow the United States to send them back. It can also happen if a person is ordered removed but an immigration judge grants them withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act or the Convention Against Torture because they are likely to be persecuted or tortured in the places where the United States is trying to send them.
The case, D.V.D. v. DHS et al., centers around what due process rights DHS must give to people before it can try to order a third-country removal. In some cases, DHS provides no notice or opportunity for a person to raise their fear of torture in a third country because DHS says they have gotten blanket assurances from the country that no deported person will be tortured – cold comfort for those impacted, their advocates, and attorneys. Where no blanket assurances exist, DHS provides a limited notice and opportunity for the person to raise a fear of torture.
The immigrant plaintiffs in this case challenged their removal to third countries, and a federal judge issued a class-wide preliminary injunction requiring DHS to provide certain safeguards to ensure due process for these individuals and any similarly situated people facing a third-country removal. The safeguards included DHS being required to provide written notice of the third country to which a person may be removed in a language they can understand, provide a meaningful opportunity for the person to raise a fear of torture in that country, and a minimum of at least 10 days between providing the notice and the actual removal, among other procedural safeguards.
DHS then asked the Supreme Court to pause that federal judge’s order. In a 6-3 order on the so-called “shadow docket,” the Supreme Court granted the government’s motion, without providing an explanation of its reasoning. In effect, the ruling means DHS can deport people with final orders of removals to third countries with no – or extremely limited – due process to seek protection from torture in those places.
Impact on Survivors
Survivors may have final orders of removal for many reasons. For example, a survivor fleeing abuse or trafficking in their home country may have been apprehended crossing the border, unable to fully express their fear of return sufficient to demonstrate a credible fear of persecution and been summarily removed under expedited removal proceedings. If they later came back to the United States in pursuit of safety, they still have a final removal order, even if they were able to obtain some legal protections later on, like protection from removal under withholding of removal or the Convention Against Torture. Similarly, survivors in the United States may become entangled in the criminal system for a variety of reasons, including dual-arrest policies in domestic violence situations. These encounters with the criminal system can result in removal orders for victims.
Survivors who obtain certain protection from deportation to their country of origin, some of whom have been living and working under these protections for years, are now vulnerable to being detained and removed to a country they do not know. This can include being sent to a place that borders the country where they experienced abuse, putting them at risk of their abuser or persecutor easily hunting them down and harming them there. It can also mean that a survivor who has already faced a harrowing journey to try and seek safety is sent to a country that is unknown to them, where they don’t speak the language, and where they may face gender-based persecution or other harm.
