A federal judge ordered this Wednesday the Donald Trump Administration to return to the United States a Colombian woman who was deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), despite the Central African country having refused to accept her for medical reasons. The woman has been identified as Adriana María Quiroz Zapata. She is 55 years old and suffers from several illnesses such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism, according to her lawyer who told The New York Times, which broke the news. The order from the district magistrate of Columbia puts even more pressure on the White House in its policy of deportation to third countries.
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Quiroz Zapata was deported to Congo on April 16 due to the impossibility of deporting her to her country of origin, from which she fled her ex-partner, a man linked to the Colombian National Police who, according to her, raped and beat her with impunity. The woman and 14 other Latin American migrants were expelled to the DRC in the first operation of this kind between the US and the Central African nation. Although Kinshasa had agreed to host the deported migrants, it had refused to receive the Colombian woman due to her health condition.
“The US Government sent her anyway. Therefore, it is likely that the sending of the plaintiff to the DRC was illegal,” wrote Judge Richard J. Leon in the ruling, according to the court record collected by the Times. “Sending the plaintiff to the DRC, therefore, was probably illegal,” he added. “There is no doubt that the plaintiff meets the requirements to be considered a victim of irreparable harm. She was sent to a country that refused to accept her because it cannot provide the necessary medical care. As a result, she faces a daily risk of medical complications, including death.”
A few days after her deportation, two Colombians spoke with EL PAÍS about the operation. Neither of them was told their destination until minutes before boarding the flight that would take them across the Atlantic. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. My head was still tangled and I asked God to give me strength. It made me very helpless because we were tied up. They gave us a small bag with a sandwich and water. We couldn’t lift our heads. They treated us like slaves. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” one of them narrated. The group of expelled also included people of Peruvian and Ecuadorian nationality.
Although the three South American governments reported that they would initiate procedures for their voluntary return to their respective countries, the migrants remain housed in a hotel in Kinshasa. There, they have received support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, to be cared for and fed.
One of the Colombians still in Kinshasa states that several of them remain ill and believe that at least one of the migrants shows symptoms of malaria. “They attend to us, but it’s not what we expected. The situation is very difficult,” he adds.
Secret deportations
The Trump Administration has promoted deportations to third countries as part of its anti-immigration campaign. US law allows migrants with expulsion orders who cannot be deported to their own countries because they face reprisals to be sent to third countries with which there are asylum agreements. However, the US government has carried out the expulsions in secret, without allowing due process for the deportees and disregarding what awaits them. It has barely provided information about the agreements reached with other governments, which generally receive economic benefits in return.
Moreover, in the case of the Colombian Quiroz Zapata, the government expelled her to Congo without the country accepting to receive her, another condition established by US legislation to carry out deportations to third countries.
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Most of the deportees have been sent to countries with which they have no ties, do not even speak the language, and remain in limbo, not knowing how to leave or whom to turn to for asylum. The conditions in which they are kept in these destinations, unable to meet basic needs for food and hygiene and even exposed to torture, have led some migrants to prefer returning to their countries of origin, where they face persecution. Others have been sent to the country they fled from without their consent.
About 17,500 people have been deported to third countries since President Trump returned to office, according to an estimate by Third Country Deportation Watch, a monitoring group operated by the nonprofit organizations Refugees International and Human Rights First. The vast majority were sent to Mexico.
The Dominican Republic has been the latest country to sign an agreement with the United States to receive people from other countries. In total, the Trump Administration has closed deals with 28 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Central Asia. The number of people deported to third countries is around 2% of total deportations, but the United States uses it as a method of persuasion to discourage the arrival of migrants and to have them withdraw their asylum requests.
Generating uncertainty about the destination to which they could be sent —Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda, Costa Rica, or Cameroon— has been a central element of the strategy. Many of the destinations are countries where there are armed conflicts, have accumulated human rights violation complaints, and lack the capacity to ensure the well-being of the deportees.
The judge in the Quiroz Zapata case referred to that of Kilmar Abrego García, the Salvadoran who last year was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and returned to the United States due to social and judicial pressure. His case raised questions about the government’s criteria for deporting to third countries. The US administration continues to fight his deportation in court, but the judge handling the case in a Maryland court has questioned its arguments to send him to Liberia. That country is the United States’ last choice to deport him after several African governments refused to receive him.
Abrego García has agreed to be sent to Costa Rica, the only country that has offered him asylum. The government insists, however, on sending him to the African country, without a credible justification in what the defense considers revenge against the Salvadoran, who has become a symbol of Trump’s unjust deportations.
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