The Trump administration will ask the US supreme court to allow it to deport immigrants to countries other than their own, the latest effort to seek approval for a controversial policy that fulfils Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Todd Blanche, the US attorney general, said on Thursday that the Department of Justice would ask the conservative-majority supreme court for help, nearly a week after a lower court judge rejected the policy.

“Without even allowing the government ⁠a chance to respond, and in the dark of night, a federal appeals court blocked us from ⁠conducting all third-country removals of illegal aliens, an entirely legal ​and invaluable tool to ‌stem the tide ‌of illegal immigration,” Blanche wrote on X.

Blanche added: “We will ‌immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court, which previously granted a stay in this very same case.”

Administration officials have entered into a series of agreements with other countries that have allowed them to deport more than 25,000 ‌migrants to at least 29 third countries. In many cases, that is Mexico, according to Third Country Deportation ​Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First.

Other immigrants have been sent to countries in Latin America, Central Asia, the Caribbean and Africa.

In some cases, US officials have deported migrants to countries considered dangerous and high risk, including the Central African Republic, which is grappling with unrest and terrorism due to political and militia instability and South Sudan, where a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding because of political and economic collapse.

Last week, a three-judge panel on the US federal appeals court in Boston rejected the Trump administration’s third-country deportation policy, upholding a lower ​court decision that declared ​the Department of Homeland ​Security’s (DHS) policy unlawful.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit ‌filed by migrants subject ​to ​deportation orders that has become a key test of what due-process protections the government must provide before removing people to countries with which they have no connection.

Human rights advocates have criticized the administration’s policy as “machiavellian” and said immigrants “find themselves in an extremely precarious and stressful situation” being sent to a country other than their own.

James Percival, the general counsel for DHS, has defended the administration’s deportations to third countries and refuted allegations of it being “cruel”.

“What is cruel is allowing criminal illegals who can’t be sent home to stay in our communities and victimize anew,” Percival wrote in an X post on Thursday.

Reuters contributed reporting