Appeals court grills DOJ over Trump’s ‘third country’ deportation policy

A federal appeals court grilled the Trump administration on Wednesday over its policy of deporting immigrants without permanent legal status to countries other than their country of origin, a policy the Supreme Court has twice allowed while litigation proceeds.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit questioned DOJ lawyer Sarah Welch over their concerns with the process of deporting illegal immigrants to countries other than their own, and specifically asked about what assurances the federal government has received from those countries not to harm the deportees it receives. Third-country deportations are typically sought by federal immigration officers when they are unable to deport an illegal immigrant back to his or her country of origin, either due to an immigration court’s order or for some other diplomatic reason. The case heard by the 1st Circuit started with a group of immigrants lacking permanent legal status the administration