ICE Deported a Colombian Woman to Congo Days After Congo Said No; Federal Judge Orders Her Returned

The Deportation

Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, a Colombian national, entered the United States across the Mexican border in August 2024 and was taken into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She has chronic medical conditions — diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism — that require ongoing care and medication. Federal law permits her deportation back to Colombia or, with the receiving country’s consent, to a third country.

ICE asked six different countries to take her. All six refused. On April 14, 2026, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo sent ICE a written notice stating that it, too, could not accept her — specifically citing her medical conditions and its inability to provide the care she requires.

Within days, ICE put her on a plane and sent her there anyway.

The Ruling

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, reviewed the record and concluded that ICE’s conduct was almost certainly unlawful. Federal law allows third-country deportations only when the third country agrees to receive the migrant. The DRC had not agreed; it had explicitly refused, in writing, ten days before the flight.

“Has been sent to a country that refused to accept her because they cannot provide sufficient medical care,” Leon wrote of Zapata. “As a result, she faces a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death.”

Leon ordered the federal government to bring Zapata back to the United States “as quickly as possible,” and required the administration to file a status update by 5 p.m. Friday and every 72 hours after that.

The Pattern

This is not the first time the Trump administration has deported people to countries that did not agree to receive them, or to countries with no plausible relationship to the deportee. In March 2025, the administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds of Venezuelan men — including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had a standing court order protecting him from deportation to El Salvador — to CECOT, the Salvadoran mega-prison. The Supreme Court ordered the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return; the administration spent months publicly refusing.

In February 2026, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes accused the executive branch of “terror” against noncitizens, citing the killings of two American citizens during ICE raids in Minnesota. In May, U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose of Rhode Island ordered an ethics review after DHS attacked her by name for releasing a man whose homicide warrant ICE had ordered Justice Department lawyers to conceal from her court.

The Zapata case fits the same architecture: ICE acts in defiance of the law and the facts, a federal court orders it to undo the violation, and the administration is left to decide whether to comply with the order or to defy it. In Abrego Garcia’s case, it tried both. In Zapata’s case, the same choice is now in front of it.

Why the Lie Matters

The administration’s justification for its mass deportation campaign has always rested on a claim that it is merely enforcing existing law against people who are unlawfully present. The Zapata case is one of many that disprove that claim. The law does not allow the United States to dump a medically vulnerable woman in a country that has, in writing, refused to take her. The law does not allow ICE to forum-shop for any country that will hold a plane long enough to receive a deportation flight. The law does not allow the executive branch to ignore a court order requiring it to bring her back.

When ICE does it anyway, what is being enforced is not immigration law. It is a political program of disappearance — moving human beings across international borders, away from American courts, faster than the legal system can intervene. Zapata is alive, for now, because a federal judge moved before she did. That is not a system. That is a race.

What Happens Next

The Trump administration has, on paper, been ordered to retrieve Zapata from the DRC. In practice, the administration has spent the last fifteen months treating federal court orders in immigration cases as advisory rather than binding. The 72-hour status updates Leon ordered are the legal mechanism by which a judge keeps that defiance on the record. If the administration drags its feet, the record will reflect it. If it complies, it will be one of the very few times in 2026 that an unlawful deportation has been reversed.

Either outcome is informative. The first tells us that the administration’s contempt for the courts has hardened. The second tells us that, at least when a federal judge is willing to keep pulling the alarm in public, the machine can occasionally be made to stop.