ICE deported Colombian woman to DR Congo after Congolese officials refused her on medical grounds

On April 16, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, a 55-year-old Colombian woman, on a removal flight from the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country to which she has no ties. The flight departed two days after Congolese authorities had formally refused to accept her because they could not adequately guarantee the medical care her conditions — diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism — would require. Quiroz Zapata had previously held an immigration judge's grant of withholding of removal barring her return to Colombia, based on a finding that she faced a torture risk by, or with the acquiescence of, the Colombian government. ICE nonetheless sent her to the DRC, where she remained as of mid-May 2026.

Quiroz Zapata had been held in ICE detention at an El Paso, Texas facility since 2024, after being stopped at the Texas-Mexico border while travelling to join family in North Bergen, New Jersey; her withholding-only proceedings were before the El Paso Immigration Court.

This entry records the third-country removal itself — the action that occurred without an adequate hearing on the third-country destination, contrary to the statutory framework requiring receiving-country acceptance, and over a withholding order grounded in a separate torture-risk finding — not the judicial order that subsequently identified it as likely unlawful. The case sits inside a broader contested-legal-authority context: in February 2026 a federal judge ruled that third-country deportations of this kind are unlawful violations of due process; in March 2026 an appeals court stayed that ruling while the Trump administration pursues legal challenges; the practice has continued under the stay.

Updates

2026-05-13 — Court grants a 14-day temporary restraining order [5][2]

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia granted a temporary restraining order in Quiroz Zapata v. Mullin, Civil Case No. 26-1560 (RJL), holding that "sending plaintiff to the DRC, therefore, was likely illegal" and directing defendants to "take all available steps to facilitate the return of plaintiff to the United States as soon as possible." The judge found she was "likely to succeed" in arguing the removal "likely violates the Immigration and Nationality Act," and that she faced "a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death." The order was set to expire in 14 days, extendable for good cause or convertible to a preliminary injunction. CNN characterized it as "a rare instance of a federal judge ordering the return of a migrant deported under President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown."

2026-05-19 — Government moves to pause the return, citing an Ebola outbreak [7]

Congolese health officials declared an Ebola outbreak on May 15, 2026. In a status report two days after telling the court it could not locate Quiroz Zapata, the Department of Homeland Security moved to pause the return order, arguing it would be unsafe to bring her back because of the outbreak. Her lawyers responded that there were no cases in Kinshasa, where she was, and called the argument opportunistic.

2026-06-05 — Judge Leon modifies his own return order [6]

Judge Leon modified the order after finding that Quiroz Zapata's lawyers had not established that ICE knew of the Congolese refusal before the removal flight departed: "If [Zapata] had conclusively shown that the April 14 letter had been brought to the attention of ICE before her removal, there would be no need to modify my prior order." As of mid-June 2026 she remained in a hotel in Kinshasa, with her health reportedly deteriorating. The reversal turns on what ICE was shown to have known at the time, not on a finding that the DRC had in fact accepted her.