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.

On May 14, 2026, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia ruled the deportation was likely unlawful and ordered the Trump administration to return Quiroz Zapata to the United States, requiring a status update by 5 p.m. that Friday. The judge found she was "likely to succeed" in her argument that sending her to the DRC "likely violates the Immigration and Nationality Act," and that she met the standard for irreparable harm because she had been "sent to a country that refused to accept her because they cannot provide sufficient medical care," exposing her to "a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death." CNN characterized the order as "a rare instance of a federal judge ordering the return of a migrant deported under President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown."

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.