Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are trying to expel at least one immigrant to a country he has never visited, according to new court documents. The effort comes after a federal appeals court struck down the Trump administration’s third country removal program last week.

On Tuesday afternoon, a Department of Justice attorney asked a federal judge to lift an order blocking the transfer of a Peruvian man from Massachusetts. ICE wanted to move him to another facility “to effectuate his removal to the Central African Republic on Sept. 24, 2026.”

The Justice Department argued that the appeals court decision was not yet in effect. The man is identified in court documents through the pseudonym John Doe.

Doe entered the United States in June 2023 and was placed in removal proceedings soon afterward. In May 2025, an immigration court granted him protection under the Convention Against Torture after he proved he would likely be tortured if deported to Peru.

He had lived in Virginia and was working temporarily in Maine when ICE captured him two months ago. He was detained in Massachusetts, where the Boston College Law School immigration clinic filed a habeas petition earlier this month.

Mary Holper, the law professor who runs the clinic, said Doe had work authorization, consistently updated his address with immigration officials, and had no criminal or arrest record. In the past, people with similar protections could live and work in the U.S. indefinitely if they did not break the law, although they had no pathway to citizenship.

Under President Trump’s immigration campaign, tens of thousands of people with those protections have been captured and sent to ICE camps. There, they face threatened removal to a third country unless they voluntarily agree to return to their countries of origin.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the administration’s third country removal policy on Friday in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security. The court ruled that immigrants must receive more time to raise concerns about being expelled to another country.

The decision also questioned government agreements with purported host nations that supposedly guarantee the safety of third country nationals. Yet the Justice Department cited the Department of Homeland Security’s March 2025 policy, the same policy the court had just rejected, to justify its plan for Doe.

The department acknowledged the ruling but claimed in a footnote that because the First Circuit “has not issued mandate in D.V.D. … it is ICE’s position that until mandate issues, the Third Country Policy may be relied upon.” Immigration attorneys in the D.V.D. case said Friday that the ruling took effect immediately.

A mandate is the document through which an appeals court formally tells a lower court the result of its decision. Such a document is generally issued within a few days and is not typically regarded as the moment when a ruling takes effect, Holper said.

“They’re basically saying that even though the First Circuit issued its well-reasoned, complete comprehensive opinion … because of a technicality, which is that the actual mandate hasn’t issued, that this means that they don’t have to follow it,” Holper said. The judge overseeing Doe’s case scheduled a hearing for Thursday morning.

Public flight information showed a private jet frequently chartered by ICE flying to Mesa, Arizona, late Tuesday night with an ICE call sign. Mesa is a common departure location for ICE removal flights to Africa.

A partial flight plan obtained by the flight tracking activist known as JJ in DC showed that the aircraft was scheduled to depart for Accra, Ghana, on Wednesday night. Ghana has accepted more third country nationals than any of the other dozen African nations participating in the network, while any later stops remained unclear.

Two additional ICE charter planes were scheduled to land near Boston on Wednesday. When told about the aircraft, Holper said, “I want to believe that the rule of law is in place, and that the government will honor that order” barring Doe’s transfer.

More than 25,000 people have been forcibly expelled to countries where they have no ties during Trump’s second term, according to Third Country Deportation Watch. Many of the nearly three dozen countries that signed agreements to receive third country nationals are controlled by authoritarian governments or are otherwise unstable.

The Central African Republic has endured near constant civil war for decades and is among the world’s poorest countries. A State Department advisory issued earlier this year warned Americans against traveling there “due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health [concerns], and terrorism.”

Dozens of immigrants from around the world have ended up virtually imprisoned in the capital city of Bangui through three ICE charter flights between June 12 and August 28. ICE did not answer a request for comment about why it was continuing such removals or how many it planned.