Now it's in the hands of America's highest judicial authority.

The Trump administration's Justice Department announced on Thursday that it is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for relief over a ruling by a lower court, which placed restrictions on illegal aliens being sent to third countries instead of being sent home.

Administration lawyers filed an emergency application to the justices after a lower federal court on Wednesday upheld a block on the government’s program, finding that people could not be deported without being given a chance to contest their cases.

In the emergency application, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the court to allow the administration to continue the deportations, calling the effort “an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency applications from the appeals court that blocked the program, asked the challengers to respond by Monday at 4 p.m.

This comes after a short-lived win on procedure for the administration in August, at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, as my colleague Susie Moore noted.

Attorney General Toidd Blanche announced the Justice Department's (DOJ) latest move in a social media post this evening.

"We just filed an emergency stay with SCOTUS. As I said, we would immediately seek relief," he wrote. "The other side has until Monday to respond (note how the Supreme Court lets both sides respond before ruling!)."

That last bit might require some simple context. Earlier in the day, the attorney general showed his disagreement with the lower court's Thursday ruling, signaling the administration's immediate appeal to the high court, noting that it did not give time for Team Trump to respond.

"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," he wrote on X, "an entirely legal and invaluable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration. We will immediately seek relief from the Supreme Court, which previously granted a stay in this very same case."

You can read the DOJ's emergency application here.