The ruling halts a lower court order that temporarily allowed migrants to challenge their removal to countries outside their homeland.

The Justice Department had sought clarification of a Supreme Court decision that allowed the administration to quickly deport immigrants to "third countries."

The U.S. Supreme Court again sided with President Donald Trump's administration in a legal fight over deporting migrants to countries other than their own, lifting on Thursday limits a judge had imposed to protect eight men who the government sought to send to politically unstable South Sudan.