US deports 15 South American nationals to DR Congo under new third-country deal despite judge-issued protections

On April 17, 2026, the United States deported 15 South American nationals to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the first group transfer under a third-country deportation agreement between Washington and Kinshasa announced earlier in April. The deportees — a group that included seven women, all nationals of Peru and Ecuador — landed overnight Thursday to Friday. An official at the DRC migration agency confirmed the arrivals, and an attorney representing one of the deportees, Alma David, told the Associated Press that the group is entirely Latin American and that all 15 are believed to hold protection issued by U.S. immigration judges shielding them from return to their home countries. The DRC's communications ministry had said earlier in the month that it would temporarily accept migrants deported from the US, that Washington would cover the costs, and that facilities had been prepared near Kinshasa to house them.

The core abuse recorded here is that protections issued by U.S. immigration judges — barring these individuals' return to their countries of origin — were circumvented by removing the same people to a third country to which they have no ties and whose language they do not speak. Deportees were placed near Kinshasa and, in subsequent reporting, said they had been given no credible options other than returning home; at least two said they had not been vaccinated against yellow fever, which is endemic in the DRC alongside malaria. The DRC said it intended to keep the group only briefly while working with the International Organization for Migration, which said it might offer "assisted voluntary return" to those who requested it. Rights groups have criticized the broader US policy of sending deportees to countries where they are not from and where they could face human rights violations, and in some prior cases people sent to third countries have later been returned to the very home countries their U.S. court protections were meant to guard against.

The transfer is the first group execution of the US-DRC deal and follows the same pattern as the individual removal of Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, a Colombian woman ICE deported to the DRC on April 16, 2026 — one day earlier — despite Congolese officials having formally refused her on medical grounds, a removal a federal judge later found likely unlawful under the Immigration and Nationality Act. According to a February 2026 report by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Trump administration had spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to third countries through January 2026, with receiving countries paid lump sums ranging from $4.7 million to $7.5 million. The Associated Press has reported that 47 additional third-country agreements with other nations are under negotiation.