President Donald Trump's administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow quick deportations of immigrants to third countries.

The government wants an immediate halt to lower court orders.

Those orders require that people have a chance to object before being deported to countries other than their homelands.

The justices had allowed the deportation flights to continue temporarily when the case came before them last year.

Since then, an appeals court upheld a Boston judge's final ruling.

That ruling says migrants must have a meaningful chance to argue that a third-country deportation would put them in danger of persecution or torture.

The ruling did not ban those deportations, but it lengthens the process.

The government argues the ruling has already caused the cancellation of a flight carrying 70 people with criminal convictions to three countries.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the government has removed thousands of aliens to third countries in recent months.

He said thousands more are eligible for such removal.

The administration says it sends people to third countries when it cannot quickly return them to their homelands.

Attorneys said those third-country governments provide assurances that people will not be persecuted or tortured.

James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security's general counsel, said Wednesday on X that 25,000 people in the U.S. illegally have been deported to third countries.

He called those deportations an essential public safety tool.

Most deportees have been sent to Mexico.

Under often-secret agreements, the administration has also deported thousands of others to more than two dozen countries, from Liberia to Guyana.

Some deportees have faced serious safety risks.

This month, lawyers for two men deported to Equatorial Guinea said police beat them and held them at gunpoint in a hotel-turned-detention center.