Judge orders Trump admin to return deported Colombian woman from DRC to US

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to return a Colombian woman to the United States after she was deported to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that had refused to accept her.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled Wednesday that the deportation of Adriana María Quiroz Zapata was likely illegal.

Quiroz Zapata, 55, who has diabetes and a thyroid condition, “has been sent to a country that refused to accept her because they cannot provide sufficient medical care,” the ruling said. “As a result, she faces a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death.”

According to a court declaration submitted by Quiroz Zapata and provided to the Associated Press by her lawyer, black spots began to grow on her back and foot while she was in detention, her skin started to peel, and her nails blackened.

“She’s not doing well and does worry that she’s going to die,” her lawyer, Lauren O’Neal, said.

Quiroz Zapata entered the U.S. from Mexico in August 2024 and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Since her deportation, she has lived in a hotel in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital. O’Neal said the hotel gates are locked, and Quiroz Zapata and other deportees are rarely allowed out, and only with supervision.

Quiroz Zapata was among thousands of immigrants living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they were suddenly issued deportation decrees ordering them expelled to countries where most had no connections.

More than 15,000 third-country deportation orders were issued in the White House push for ever more immigrant expulsions, advocacy groups say, though only a fraction of the orders have been carried out.

Few details are known about the agreements to accept these deportees, though the U.S. has signed them with a range of countries, including Ecuador, Honduras, Uganda, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Advocacy groups estimate only a couple of hundred third-country deportations, at most, have been carried out.