Boston Judge Blocks Third-Country Removal Policy After Secret Deportations of 6,000 Cubans

(BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, USA) — U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy set aside the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy on February 25, 2026, ruling that federal officials must give migrants a real chance to contest transfer to another country before deporting them.

Murphy’s ruling capped a year of litigation in Boston over what advocates and court filings described as secret deportations, including the transfer of thousands of non-Mexican nationals to Mexico. The Justice Department has indicated it will appeal and has argued that limiting such removals would disrupt operations.

At the center of the case is whether the government can send people to countries other than their own without first telling them where they are going and allowing them to seek protection. Murphy wrote that the government must give people “a meaningful opportunity” to challenge a transfer and seek protection before removal, and added that “no ‘person’ in this country may be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’”

The Boston case has become the main legal test of the administration’s use of Mexico as a destination for third-country removals. Public statements and monitoring groups have documented that thousands of foreigners, many of them Cubans, have been sent from the United States into Mexico since January 20, 2025.

Mexico’s government has publicly acknowledged the broad totals. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration first confirmed on January 27–28, 2025 that it had received non-Mexican deportees from the United States, citing 4,000 in the first week.

By July 2025, her administration said Mexico had received 6,525 foreigners from the United States since Jan. 20, 2025. That figure did not include a breakdown by nationality.

That distinction matters in the fight over claims that 6,000 Cubans were sent to Mexico. Publicly documented data do not show 6,000 Cuban nationals specifically removed there, even as researchers, aid groups and field reporting have described Cubans as a large share of the people transferred.

The clearest Cuban-specific figure came from Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, who cited a Mexican government document saying the United States “repatriated another 3,753 Cubans to Mexico” during 2025. Refugees International said in a February 2026 analysis that Cubans made up the majority of U.S. third-country deportees to Mexico in fall 2025, but it did not provide a cumulative Cuban total.

That leaves two figures side by side. Mexico has cited 6,525 foreigners of mixed nationalities since Jan. 20, 2025, while the best publicly surfaced Cuban-only count is 3,753 for 2025.

Murphy first intervened in late March 2025. On March 28–29, 2025, he issued a temporary restraining order blocking removals to third countries “unless and until” the Department of Homeland Security gave written notice of the destination and a chance to seek humanitarian protection.

The order went to the core of the dispute. Migrants facing transfer, the court said, had to receive notice of where they would be sent and an opportunity to raise fear-based claims, including under the Convention Against Torture.

Court scrutiny intensified in April and May 2025. Murphy expanded relief after finding the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on due-process claims tied to an ongoing policy of removing people “without notice and an opportunity to be heard.”

A May 21, 2025 emergency hearing sharpened the conflict. After DHS flew eight migrants, including two Cubans, toward South Sudan and elsewhere, Murphy said the administration had violated his order.

The two Cubans identified in accounts of that episode were Enrique Arias Hierro and José Manuel Rodríguez. Their case became one of the clearest public examples of Murphy pressing the administration over compliance with his directives.

The legal picture shifted again in June 2025, when the Supreme Court stayed Murphy’s earlier injunctions and allowed third-country removals to resume while the district court case continued. Even so, the case in Boston moved forward, leading to Murphy’s broader February 25, 2026 ruling on the policy itself.

In that final district court ruling to date, Murphy set aside the policy as unlawful. He also found that at least six class members had been deported to El Salvador and Mexico in March 2025 in violation of the temporary order.

The Justice Department has responded by filing notices and statements indicating an appeal. In those filings, government lawyers argued Murphy “evaded Supreme Court precedent” and warned of operational disruption if third-country removals are curtailed during the appeal.

That appeal leaves the current landscape unsettled as of March 29, 2026. Murphy’s order knocked down the policy in the District of Massachusetts, but the administration is still fighting to preserve room for third-country removals while higher courts review the case.

The dispute has unfolded alongside a broader push against humanitarian parole programs. In 2025, DHS moved to revoke work authorization and parole for about 532,000 beneficiaries under the CHNV program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

The agency published notice on March 25, 2025 and set a cancellation date of April 24, 2025, creating a 30-day wind-down. On June 12, 2025, DHS said it began notifying about 532,000 CHNV parolees that their protections had been revoked.

The Supreme Court later allowed the administration’s CHNV rollbacks to proceed while appeals continued. That expanded the number of people exposed to immigration enforcement and potential removal.

For Cubans in particular, deportation routes have split between direct returns to Cuba and transfers to Mexico. Cuba has continued to accept regular deportation flights, with monitors counting 1,379–1,535 people returned to Cuba in 2025.

Those flights continued in 2026. One such flight carried 116 people on February 19, 2026.

At the same time, Mexico has remained an active destination for third-country transfers involving Cubans. Researchers and aid groups have said U.S. officers have often sent Cubans with certain criminal records to Mexico instead of Cuba.

That pattern surfaced again in southern Mexico this month. Tapachula, in Chiapas state, has seen a recent influx of non-Mexican nationals, particularly Cubans deported by the Trump administration, though Mexico has not published official tallies for those arrivals.

The contrast between Cuba-bound flights and Mexico transfers has become one of the clearest signs of how the policy operates in practice. Some Cubans are removed to their home country through regular deportation flights, while others are sent to Mexico as a third-country destination.

The Boston litigation has focused on what procedures must come first. Under Murphy’s orders, DHS cannot remove someone to a third country without written notice of the intended destination and a “meaningful opportunity” to seek protection before an immigration judge.

That process matters because fear claims differ from country to country. A migrant ordered removed from the United States may not fear return to his homeland in the same way he fears transfer to a third country.

Murphy’s rulings turned on that point. His court said due process requires notice, time to respond and a meaningful chance to seek protection before transfer.

Litigants in the case have pointed to INA §241(b), 8 U.S.C. §1231(b)(2), which governs countries of removal and limits on designations, as well as 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16–1208.18, which cover fear-based protections under the Convention Against Torture and related rules. Murphy also emphasized the Fifth Amendment in the language quoted from his decision.

The administration has defended third-country removals as a tool of immigration enforcement. Its legal filings in Boston challenged the lower court’s restrictions and sought to narrow the reach of Murphy’s orders.

Still, the court fight has given unusual visibility to removals that often unfolded with little public notice. The phrase secret deportations gained traction as lawyers and advocates argued that migrants were being sent to unfamiliar countries without advance warning or any real chance to object.

Boston has remained the center of that challenge. The district court there has issued the restraining order, the follow-on relief in spring 2025, and the February 25, 2026 merits ruling that now frames the next stage of the fight.

The factual record that emerged in the case and in public statements is narrower than some of the political rhetoric around it. Public documents support that Mexico received 6,525 foreigners from the United States since Jan. 20, 2025, and that at least 3,753 Cubans were sent there in 2025, while multiple groups described Cubans as the dominant share of transfers in late 2025.

What the record does not establish is a documented total of 6,000 Cubans sent to Mexico. The legal battle in Boston, however, has made clear that the broader third-country removal policy reached far beyond isolated cases.

For now, the administration’s appeal will determine whether Murphy’s due-process demands stand or are narrowed by higher courts. Until then, the Boston case remains the clearest window into how third-country removals worked, how Mexico became a destination for many of them, and how a federal judge concluded that people facing those transfers must first be given “a meaningful opportunity” to fight them.