Italy’s much-debated program to send asylum seekers to Albania was restarted on Sunday, Italy’s interior ministry said, months after judges blocked the first transfers there.

An Italian navy ship was transporting 49 people to centers built by Italy in Albania, the ministry said. The spokeswoman of the ministry added that those who were transferred were intercepted at sea before reaching Italy.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has put the idea of ​​keeping new asylum seekers out of the country under review as a flagship policy of her administration, describing it as an innovative way to fight illegal immigration and deter migrants from taking risky boat trips across the Mediterranean.

Ms Meloni restarted the program after removing the case from the jurisdiction of judges in Rome who had ruled against the initial broadcasts. That verdict cast doubt on the program’s future. Those judges said the 12 migrants Italy sent to Albania in October were ineligible for the program because the countries they came from, Bangladesh and Egypt, might not be considered safe.

Since then, Mrs. Meloni’s government has created a new list of countries it considers safe. Interior Ministry officials did not list the countries the migrants came from, but said they were from countries considered safe.

The plan drew condemnation from human rights groups and the Italian opposition, who condemned it as cruel and prohibitively expensive. But some politicians across Europe, including those from the main parties, see it as a potential model for migration policy at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is increasingly widespread. The president of the executive branch of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, called it “an example of non-standard thinking, based on a fair sharing of responsibility with third countries.”

The decision of the judges in Rome to stop the transfer has started bitter dispute between Mrs. Meloni and the Italian judiciary. The Italian judges, including the judges in Rome, asked European Court of Justice to clarify, among other things, who determines what is a safe country. That court is expected to hear the case next month.

In Italy, the question of whether migrants can stay in Albania has now been transferred to an appeals court in Rome.

Although the outcome of the attempt to revive the policy remains uncertain, Ms. Meloni has made it clear that she intends to push it through one way or another.

“Trust me, the centers in Albania will work,” she said last month at her party’s rally in Rome. “Even if I have to spend every night on the case, from now until the end of this Italian government.”

Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.