Supreme Court emergency ruling allows Trump admin to resume deporting immigrants to third countries

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration may resume deporting immigrants to countries other than their place of origin.

The nation's highest court on Tuesday paused a lower court ruling that had blocked the government from deporting people to locations with which they had no connection, without due process. The emergency ruling did not include a vote count, though it noted that Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the request to resume deportations.

The Supreme Court is expected to revisit the issue in December, when it will hear oral arguments. A final ruling is anticipated next year.

The decision marks a significant victory for the administration, which has spent more than a year and a half transferring individuals to countries worldwide as part of its mass deportation program.

This is not the first time the court has weighed in on the matter. In June 2025, the court overruled a lower court decision regarding a class action lawsuit, granting the executive branch the authority to deport individuals without objection—even if deportees are likely to face the risk of death or grave harm in the new location.

According to a CNN report published last week, the government has deported nearly one million people since Donald Trump returned to office. Some of those individuals have been sent to countries with histories of human rights abuses.

At least 25,000 people have been deported from the U.S. to developing countries under Trump's "secure the border" agenda, according to a social media post by Homeland Security legal chief James Percival last week. Percival added that "third country removal is an essential public safety tool."

Percival cited reasons such as the possibility that a home country might reject a person's return, as well as the high costs associated with sending individuals back to their country of origin—particularly if the country is far from the U.S.

"Imagine, for example, that DHS needs to remove a single illegal alien to a remote country halfway across the world. Is DHS supposed to spend a fortune chartering a private plane for one law breaker?" continued Percival.

Percival then echoed Trump's rhetoric, claiming that many immigrants facing third-country deportations are the "worst of the worst" types of criminals—including "child rapists" and "killers"—despite not being tried before deportation.

"Before President Trump came along, the U.S. government typically just released these people after six months because they could not or did not care to find a third country," Percival claimed.

This story has been updated.

Read more about deportations: Trump Sends Millions to Authoritarian Leaders in Deportation Crackdown

DHS Funds Used for Pro-Trump Television Ads

It has emerged that President Trump used money from the Department of Homeland Security for self-promotional advertisements.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House paid for multiple pro-Trump ads specifically with funds from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The ads praise the president and highlight claims of his achievements in office. One features the JMSN song "Love Me" as Trump declares, "America will never be a Communist country." Another appears to copy a 2024 campaign video, showing a black-and-white Trump walking while his voice speaks of "the final battle." A third shows images of Mount Rushmore as Trump narrates, "The United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history."

Trump was reportedly involved in the ads' creation and pushed for them personally. They include a "paid for by the U.S. government" disclaimer, which may violate federal laws—including the Hatch Act—against the executive branch promoting political causes. The Trump administration claims they are public service announcements.

In a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday, Democratic Senators Patty Murray and Chris Murphy stated that "using government funding to create or air political ads like the ones that have been running over the last few days is illegal and a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars." They reported that Trump has set aside $20 million of DHS funds for the ads.

"The American people deserve answers about how this president is literally stealing their tax dollars to air campaign ads celebrating himself—while doing nothing to help them afford health care or housing. These ads need to immediately come off the air, taxpayers need to be paid back for this theft, and everyone responsible needs to be held accountable for this corrupt and illegal propaganda," the senators wrote.

As of Sunday, the ads had aired nearly 90 times across national television on networks including MS NOW, CBS, Fox, and Newsmax, at an estimated cost of $337,000. They have also aired on local stations 2,311 times, at an estimated cost of $1.4 million.

"These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad," a White House spokesperson said last week. "The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country."

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State Department Awarded Contract to Russian-Linked Tech Firm Despite Warnings

The State Department offered a government contract to Oxygen Forensics even after federal officials were made aware of the company's ties to Moscow.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber (an American) and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They were also accused of orchestrating a scheme to conceal the company's Russian ownership from federal agencies to which they supplied phone hacking software.

The government was aware of this by at least August 28, when Oxygen Forensics sued a former employee turned whistleblower, Max Weissberg, for making the plot public. Nonetheless, the State Department agreed to a $50,000 contract with Oxygen Forensics that same day, according to federal procurement data obtained by PunchUp.

Reiber advertised that his company—which provides forensic and archival services for electronic data—exclusively sold American-made software and had no foreign ownership.

Yet five Russian nationals, including Davydov, allegedly owned and controlled Oxygen Forensics through a holding company based in Cyprus, according to a criminal complaint released by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. The company's software was also Russian, the complaint alleged.

Several executive agencies were affected by the scheme: the Defense Department and components of the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service, the National Computer Forensics Institute, Homeland Security Investigations, and the DHS Office of Inspector General, according to the complaint. Federal procurement data suggests that the State Department—as well as the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia, which awarded the contract—could also have been compromised.

The Virginia-based group allegedly concealed its true ownership after the U.S. imposed additional sanctions on Russia in early 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine. Months later, Reiber—of Boise, Idaho—was appointed the company's CEO, president, and chairman of the board, while mentions of Russian ownership were removed from the company's public filings, according to the complaint.

Details released in the affidavit suggest Reiber was well aware of the conspiracy. In November 2023, Reiber wrote to Davydov and the other alleged Russian accomplices after a reporter asked about Oxygen Forensics' connection to a Russian company. Reiber noted that the reporting "could destroy" a pending contract with the National Computer Forensics Institute, and that the "current existence of this company hangs in the balance," according to the criminal complaint.

Read more about Oxygen Forensics: Russian Plot to Infiltrate Secret Service Exposed

FBI Under Kash Patel Accused of Manipulating Arrest Statistics

Kash Patel's FBI has been accused of fudging numbers to boost the agency's success rate in apprehending fugitives from its Top 10 Most Wanted List.

Patel announced the addition of a new name to the list on Tuesday and boasted about the agency's capture rate under his leadership.

"This FBI has had historic success manhunting Ten Most Wanted fugitives—since the start of the Trump administration, we've captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW fugitives captured during the previous four years combined," Patel wrote on X.

However, Patel's FBI has imposed new policies that manipulate that data by adding the names of fugitives who are expected to be imminently captured, according to MS NOW.

Those are not the only statistics being padded. The director also instructed FBI field offices to include any suspects arrested in the presence of agency personnel in official arrest counts, MS NOW reported.

Thus, when Patel claims that the agency had "forty-five thousand violent offenders arrested last year, twice as many as 2024," that figure includes suspects in cases led by local police departments and other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.

The double counting did not help remove more alleged criminals from the streets, but it did provide Patel with a convenient statistic to cite when deflecting questions about his alleged excessive drinking, unexplained absences, and other erratic behavior.

Read more about Patel: FBI Deputy Chief Quits After Just One Year of Working With Kash Patel

RFK Jr. Proposes Government Collection of Health Data for AI Analysis

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants Americans to hand over their health data to the government, where it would then be searched by artificial intelligence.

At an event held by the MAHA Institute, run by anti-vaccine activist Mark Gorton, Kennedy said he wanted the fe...

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