A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration had most likely violated the law by deporting a Colombian woman to the Democratic Republic of Congo in April despite that country’s refusal to take her.
The judge ordered the administration to return the woman, Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata, 55, to the United States, a rare instance of a judge doing so amid the administration’s deportation campaign.
The ruling was not yet listed in a public docket on Wednesday night, but it was shared with The New York Times by Ms. Zapata’s lawyer.
Both U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the State Department are under pressure from the White House to find places to deport migrants whom the government cannot send to their home countries, usually because a judge has ruled that they will most likely face persecution and torture there.
As a workaround, the administration has been cutting deals with countries that are willing to accept these migrants. Congo had agreed to accept some deportees, but refused on medical grounds to accept Ms. Zapata, court records show.
Ms. Zapata has diabetes, hyperlipidemia and hypothyroidism, according to her lawyer, Lauren O’Neal. Because of those conditions, the Congolese Interior Ministry told I.C.E. in a letter that it could not accept her because it could not provide adequate medical care, according to the letter, which was obtained by The Times.
“The government sent her to the D.R.C., anyway,” the judge, Richard J. Leon, wrote, adding, “Sending plaintiff to the D.R.C., therefore, was likely illegal.”
Federal law allows the government to deport people to countries other than their own. But that law requires that the new country agree to accept them.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A message seeking comment with the Congolese Embassy in Washington was not immediately returned.
The case has echoes to that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador last year. Courts ordered the administration to bring him back to the United States. Judge Leon cited that case in his three-page ruling.
Ms. Zapata fled from her former partner, a man tied to the Colombian national police who, she said, raped and beat her with impunity, according to an interview she gave to The New York Times last week from the Congolese hotel where she was staying.
In 2025, after a U.S. immigration court considered documentary evidence and her testimony, a judge ruled that the government could not send her back to her home country because she would most likely face torture.
Ms. Zapata, now in the hotel just outside Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, with 14 other migrants deported by the Trump administration, said she was terrified of what would happen next.
“I’m always in my room 24/7. I am scared all the time,” she said in the interview before the court ruling.
Judge Leon ordered the administration to tell him by Friday evening what steps it had taken to return Ms. Zapata to the United States.
The judge, who was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, separately drew Mr. Trump’s ire last month after ordering a halt to the construction of the new White House ballroom.
Hamed Aleaziz and Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.
Pranav Baskar is an international reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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