Page T2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 29 September 2026
FOR NOW
As it ran on the front
On September 18, the Washington Examiner reported the strategy was accelerating: the Departments of Homeland Security and State had been signing deals with governments across the globe, clearing the way to fly people out not to their home countries but to whichever third country would take them, no ties required.
Five days later, on a Wednesday night, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pulled the stay out from under that operation, dissolving the order that had let the flights keep moving and reviving a lower rule: give people facing third-country removal notice, and a chance to say they'd be tortured or persecuted where they were headed.…
…(cont) The next day, Attorney General Todd Blanche was on the record vowing to run straight to the Supreme Court. Homeland Security filed the request that same Thursday, asking the justices to let the deportations resume while the case worked itself out.
They didn't have to wait long. On Tuesday, in a one-page unsigned order, the Court voted 6-3 — Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson in dissent — to stay the Boston court's ruling and let the flights resume immediately. It did not rule on whether the policy is legal.
That's the sequence: emergency enough to green-light removals tonight, patient enough to schedule the argument about whether removing them was ever allowed for a Tuesday in December. The gap between those two dates is not empty. United Nations experts, reacting to the same order, called the interim what it is — a cascade of human rights violations, running on a clock the Court itself set.
Whatever the justices decide in December about jurisdiction and classwide relief will arrive after the flights it was meant to review have already landed. The case gets its hearing. The people it was about get removed first and heard from, if at all, later — assuming there's a docket left with their name still on it.
“This is the whole trick with the "emergency" docket — it's only an emergency when it's an emergency for them to keep doing the thing, never an emergency for the guy who might get tortured on landing. They can move a flight schedule in a day but need until December to decide if the flight schedule was legal. That's not caution, that's a receipt with the due date printed after the balance already got collected.”
“Look, the Court didn't rule on the merits here, that's important, that's — okay it did let the deportations resume, but that's just maintaining the status quo ante the litigation, it's a jurisdictional stay, very technical. Six justices agreed, that's not nothing, that's a supermajority of — did I just call 6-3 a supermajority, that's not how fractions work, forget I said that. The point is due process happens in December, on schedule, like it's supposed to.”
The receipts
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Supreme Court allows rapid deportations to 3rd countries, agrees to hear caseThe Trump administration can continue deporting migrants to third countries without prior notice after the Supreme Court paused a lower court order blocking the policy.
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for NowThe court also announced it would hear arguments in December on the legality of the Trump administration policy to swiftly deport immigrants to countries not their own.
The Supreme Court cleared Trump's third-country deportation policy to proceed while justices prepare to hear the full legal challenge in December.
The UN torture rapporteur found direct-contact electric shock gloves "incompatible with the absolute prohibition of torture" - ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on them ABC10 San Diego / UN Special Rapporteur finding, August 2026
Supreme Court allows ‘third country’ deportations to resume for nowThe high court will later hear arguments and make a final ruling on the Trump administration’s controversial policy of sending migrants to countries where they are not citizens.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, even as United Nations experts warned that the policy is putting deportees at heightened risk of human rights violations. In a one-page order , the justices—who did not rule on…
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
SCOTUS Overturns Blockade On Trump’s Third-Country DeportationsThe U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday once again shut down a lower court blockade against a key component of President Trump’s deportation agenda. The vote was 6-3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent.
· Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow third-country deportations to resume from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Todd Blanche vows Supreme Court appeal after court blocks third-country deportations from the morgue, 24 Sep 2026
· Trump’s deportation strategy increasingly includes flying illegal immigrants to ‘third countries’ from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· Six major cases the Supreme Court will hear in its upcoming term from the morgue, 20 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.