A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring a Colombian woman back to the U.S. from Congo, after she was deported to the African nation even though it had refused to accept her because it could not care for her medical needs.

The deportation of Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata “was likely illegal,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled Wednesday.

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.”

Black spots began to grow on Zapata’s back and foot while she was in detention, her skin started to peel and her nails blackened, according to documents Zapata submitted in court, which were provided to the AP by her lawyer. She also suffers from depression, anxiety and insomnia.

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

Congo didn't want Zapata but she was sent there anyway

Zapata entered the U.S. from Mexico in August 2024 and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

A judge found last year that she could not be deported to Colombia because she could be tortured if returned. Her former partner there had ties to the national police force, and beat her so viciously he broke her teeth, stabbed her twice, raped her and threatened to kill her, she wrote in court documents.

The government requested to send her to half a dozen other countries that all refused to accept her, according to court records. The Congolese government on April 14 notified ICE in writing that it also could not take Zapata. Within days, she was sent there anyway, records show.

She was among at least 15 who were sent to Congo, said Rep. Rob Menendez, a democrat of New Jersey, who has been working with Zapata and her family for more than a year.

Menendez likened the case to that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the administration sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled he be returned to the U.S.

“We have to make the assumption that they are small reflections of what is happening more broadly,” he said. “These are reflective of this administration having zero concern for due process, zero concern for people’s legal rights, trampling all over our legal system, trampling all over individual rights and pushing the bounds and limits in ways we would have never even imagined.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.

She was living legally in the US

Since being deported, Zapata has lived in a hotel in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The hotel gates are locked, O’Neal said. Zapata and other deportees are rarely allowed out, and only with supervision, she said.

“She was close to signing to agree to go back to Colombia,” said O'Neal, adding that the possibility of being tortured there seemed to her more bearable: "because at least dying there would involve some time where she didn’t feel so much physical pain.”

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 that ordered 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 Congo. Advocacy groups estimate only a couple of hundred third-country deportations, at most, have been carried out.

Hoping for justice and Zapata's return

The judge, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, ordered the federal government to bring Zapata back as quickly as possible. He wrote that they must update the court on the status of that effort by 5 p.m. Friday and every 72 hours after that.

“It was at least some level of justice for what’s been a horrendous broken process for Adriana and her family,” Menendez said.

But they aren’t “spiking the football,” he said — they still have to make sure the administration complies with the judge’s order and brings Zapata back. He worries about all the cases like hers that have been quietly carried out behind the walls of detention centers and on deportation flights that the public hasn’t learned of yet.

“It should have never had to happen,” he said. “If this is happening, what else is happening that we don’t even know about?”

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