Third-Country Deportation: How Destinations Are Chosen

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A deportation order can leave a second question unsettled: where the person will be sent. Nationality does not always supply the answer. U.S. law permits destinations tied to past travel, residence or birthplace, and in specified circumstances another country willing to receive the person.

For someone sent to a third country, that choice may mean arriving without citizenship, legal status, social ties or a familiar language. The consequences turn an apparently simple destination decision into a question about government authority: which legal connection allows that country to be chosen, and when must its government agree?

Who chooses the country of removal?

The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary authority to use another willing country when removal to the designated or connected countries would be impracticable, inadvisable or impossible. Nationality is one connection the law recognizes, not the only possible basis for a destination.

For people covered by the ordinary removal branch, the starting point is a country the person designates after being ordered removed. That opportunity gives the person a role in the choice without giving them a veto over removal elsewhere.

The Supreme Court explains that the ordinary branch also covers people formerly treated as excluded after being allowed into the country, while the arrival branch applies to proceedings initiated immediately on arrival. So physical presence inside the United States is a useful starting distinction, but the legal branch depends on how the removal proceeding began.

The ordinary destination sequence

The sequence works like a series of conditional commands: each stage identifies eligible destinations and explains when the government can move beyond them. Reading only the final fallback would conceal the choices that precede it.

The person may designate one country, and the government must remove them there except as otherwise provided in the statute. A country adjoining the United States, an adjacent island, or an island adjacent to an adjoining country can be designated only if the person is a native, citizen, subject or national of it, or has resided there.

The government may disregard the designation if it is not made promptly, the country does not finally answer an acceptance inquiry within 30 days, the country is unwilling to accept the person, or removal there would be prejudicial to the United States. A preference alone cannot compel a receiving country to take someone or override the statutory public-interest exception.

If removal does not occur to the designated country, the next command is removal to a country of which the person is a subject, national or citizen. That command does not apply if its government is unwilling to accept the person or does not finally answer the first inquiry within 30 days or another period DHS considers reasonable. The two acceptance-response periods are therefore not identical: the nationality-country provision expressly allows another reasonable period.

If the earlier stages do not determine removal, the statute permits any of several countries connected to the person. These connections can arise from travel, residence or birth, so they need not all point to the country of citizenship.

• The country from which the person was admitted to the United States.
• The country containing the foreign port from which the person left for the United States or for an adjoining foreign territory.
• A country where the person lived before entering the country from which they entered the United States.
• The country where the person was born.
• The country that had sovereignty over the birthplace when the person was born.
• The country containing the birthplace when the person is ordered removed.

In Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Supreme Court described these six connected-country clauses as permitting removal to any one of them. The birthplace-related clauses account for borders and sovereignty that can change between birth and removal. They are distinct legal connections even when they happen to describe the same place.

Only if removal to each of those connected-country destinations is impracticable, inadvisable or impossible does the final fallback allow another country whose government will accept the person. This is the route that can reach a country without one of the listed personal connections. A willing government supplies the final destination criterion; it does not erase the condition for reaching that stage.

Citizenship supplies one destination criterion; travel, residence and birthplace supply separate ones. Multiple nationality need not identify a single destination, and lack of nationality does not eliminate the later destination criteria.

The statute also contains a special wartime provision: when war makes ordinary removal impracticable, inadvisable, inconvenient or impossible, it permits specified government-in-exile or nearby destinations, or another country with the recognized home government’s consent. That is a separate exception with its own conditions, rather than a general alternative to the ordinary sequence.

Why a receiving country’s consent is not always required

The acceptance question cannot be answered with a single rule for every stage. The Jama majority held that the six connected-country clauses contain no advance acceptance requirement, while the final fallback expressly does.

The dispute in Jama concerned removal to Somalia, the litigant’s country of birth and citizenship, after he declined to designate a destination. He challenged that choice on the ground that Somalia lacked a functioning government that could consent in advance. Although Somalia had not confirmed willingness to receive him at the nationality-country stage, the government selected it under the birth-country clause. The same country thus appeared at different stages, with different acceptance consequences.

The majority relied on the absence of acceptance language in the six connected-country clauses and its explicit inclusion in the final clause. It also reasoned that each clause ends with a period and can be understood independently. On that reading, the final clause’s acceptance language cannot simply be carried backward across the list.

The majority rejected the argument that acceptance must apply throughout to prevent bypassing the nationality-country requirement, noting that nationality and connected-country destinations overlap imperfectly. It also rejected the claim that Congress had adopted a settled earlier acceptance rule, reasoning that the newer removal procedure combined older provisions with different judicial interpretations.

The dissent read the final clause’s reference to another willing country as carrying an acceptance requirement through the preceding clauses. It argued that the majority’s reading could circumvent the nationality-country acceptance requirement when a person’s birthplace and citizenship pointed to the same country. The dissent also relied on earlier law and House reports indicating that the amendment was not intended to change the substantive rule. That disagreement concerned how the statute’s parts fit together, not whether receiving-country cooperation has practical value.

The majority said officials could skip a country that resisted acceptance or declined assurances that its border guards would allow entry. It treated nonacceptance as a possible factor in deciding that a connected-country removal was impracticable or inadvisable, rather than an automatic legal bar. Legal eligibility and a workable transfer are therefore different questions.

A different branch for people arriving

For a person arriving on a vessel or aircraft whose standard immigration-court proceedings begin at arrival, the initial destination is generally the country where they boarded that vessel or aircraft. Here the trip that brought the person to the United States supplies the first connection, rather than a personal designation.

If the person boarded the U.S.-bound vessel or aircraft in an adjoining foreign territory or nearby island and is not a native (a person born there), citizen, subject or national of that place, or does not live there, the statute directs removal to the country where they boarded the vessel that brought them to that connecting place. The statute is distinguishing a departure point from a connecting stop, not treating every nearby place as interchangeable.

If the initial country is unwilling to accept the person, the arrival branch allows alternatives based on nationality, birthplace or residence. Its final fallback requires a willing receiving government and applies only if removal to each earlier alternative is impracticable, inadvisable or impossible. The arrival and ordinary branches both contain fallbacks, but their starting points and lists differ.

What a removal arrangement adds

A destination provision identifies what U.S. law permits; a country arrangement addresses another government’s participation. Neither question can substitute for the other.

In a January 8, 2026 statement, Dominica’s government described a non-binding arrangement being finalised under which it could receive third-country nationals proposed by the United States at its sole discretion. Dominica reserved the right to decline any proposal, reject an individual based on criminal history, and receive relevant medical or criminal records in advance where permitted by law. Either government could discontinue participation through written diplomatic notice.

Those terms show why announcing an arrangement is not the same as promising admission for every person the United States proposes. They also distinguish acceptance of a particular transfer from the U.S. legal conditions for selecting the destination.

Destination authority does not settle protection or the pending case

The statute restricts removal to a country where a person’s life or freedom would be threatened because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. The persecution restriction excludes people who participated in persecuting others on those grounds, people convicted of a particularly serious crime who are dangerous to the U.S. community, and people for whom there are serious reasons to believe they committed a serious nonpolitical crime abroad before arrival. It also excludes people reasonably considered a danger to U.S. security and people covered by the provision’s cross-reference to separate deportability grounds. Identifying an eligible destination therefore does not, by itself, resolve every legal limit on sending a particular person there.

DHS’s stay application describes guidance allowing removal without further procedures when a country supplies credible assurances against persecution or torture, and providing notice and an opportunity to express fear when it does not. The plaintiffs argue that the guidance violates the removal statute and anti-torture protections by allowing removal without meaningful destination notice or an opportunity to raise a country-specific fear claim. That dispute concerns the protections surrounding a particular transfer, alongside the statutory question of which countries can be selected.

On September 29, 2026, the Supreme Court stayed the February 25 order and judgment of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Department of Homeland Security v. D. V. D. The Supreme Court also agreed to hear the case and directed briefing on jurisdiction, authority for classwide relief, and whether the government’s third-country removal guidance violates the removal statute, due process or anti-torture law. Granting a stay pauses the lower-court judgment while the Supreme Court takes up those questions; it does not supply their final answers.

The Court directed a schedule allowing argument in December 2026, and its stay lasts until the Supreme Court’s judgment is sent down. The current policy dispute is therefore still open, even though Jama supplies an older interpretation of the destination clauses.

The key consequence is that a person’s home country, a country connected to their past, and a country willing to receive them can occupy different places in the legal sequence. Whether the government can choose a destination and whether it can lawfully carry out that person’s removal remain separate questions.