Judge reverses order to return Colombian woman with NJ ties from Congo

A woman with New Jersey ties who was deported to Congo — even though she’s from Columbia — will remain there for the foreseeable future after a federal judge vacated his own earlier order directing the Trump administration to bring her home.

Adriana Zapata has been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since April, after being deported by ICE. Zapata had fled torture in her native country and was trying to get to her family in New Jersey when she crossed the border in 2024. She had been detained in Texas since.

Zapata can’t be sent back to Colombia because an immigration judge determined she faced a credible threat of torture in her home country; her legal filings describe a campaign of brutal violence against her and her family by her former partner, and say he has close ties to the Colombian National Police.

The Trump administration spent months looking for a third country to send her to, and ultimately landed on the DRC.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had previously found the administration “likely” broke the law by sending Zapata to the DRC despite the African country apparently never agreeing to take her.

But Leon reversed himself earlier this month in a dramatic twist, after he decided that new evidence produced by the administration showed the DRC had in fact agreed to take Zapata, undermining the rationale of his order to return her.

Neither the Justice Department nor Lauren O’Neal, a lawyer for Zapata, responded to requests for comment.

An April 14 letter from a Congolese immigration official denying Zapata entry into the DRC because she had complex health issues, and citing the country’s lack of adequate medical facilities, is at the heart of the case. The letter had been obtained by O’Neal and was the underpinning of Leon’s rationale for ordering Zapata returned to the United States.

That letter is dated two days before Zapata was put on a plane to the DRC on April 16. But government lawyers argued that the April 14 letter was never shared with the administration through proper diplomatic channels, so the administration was not aware of any issue with Zapata’s deportation.

Government lawyers also argued that a January agreement between the United States and the DRC for ICE to send deportees to the African country generally covered Zapata’s deportation.

Félix Tshisekedi, the president of the DRC, said at a press conference last month that his country entered into the arrangement as a favor to the U.S. and that deportees are being well cared for. He did not specifically address Zapata. She is one of 15 people sent by ICE to the DRC in April, according to NPR.

According to a State Department official, the Trump administration first notified the DRC of its intent to send Zapata to that country in February, and Congolese officials never indicated they would not accept her.

Zapata’s lawyers argued they tried multiple avenues to share the April 14 letter with ICE before the deportation flight, including directly sending the letter to ICE officials in El Paso, where Zapata was being detained. Staffers for Rep. Rob Menendez, a Democrat who counts Zapata’s family as his constituents, emailed staff at ICE’s Office of Congressional Relations a copy of the letter on the day Zapata was flown out of the country. It’s unclear if the letter was sent before her deportation flight had taken off.

Menendez’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

“If [Zapata] had conclusively shown that the April 14 letter had been brought to the attention of ICE before her removal, there would be no need to modify my prior order. As such, however, plaintiff has not made the requisite ‘clear showing’ that she is entitled to the ‘extraordinary remedy’ of a temporary restraining order,” Leon wrote in his June 5 ruling.

Zapata, who suffers from multiple health conditions, has been at a hotel in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, since she arrived in April. Her lawyers are pleading for her release in their filings, arguing that her health is deteriorating.

The Trump administration has previously argued it would be unsafe for Zapata to return to America because of an ongoing Ebola outbreak in the DRC. O’Neal has said in court filings that she is prepared to personally go to Kinshasa to bring Zapata back, with the help of Menendez’s office and Zapata’s family, while abiding by any necessary quarantine protocols.