Fifteen Latin Americans deported by the Trump administration to the Democratic Republic of Congo remain in supervised confinement more than a month after their arrival, despite U.S. immigration judges having granted several of them legal protection orders. The deportees describe conditions that amount to detention in all but name, raising urgent questions about due process violations and the human cost of third-country deportation agreements.
A 29-year-old Colombian woman, one of the deportees, spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. She described being shackled during deportation despite a U.S. immigration judge's protection order, and now faces an impossible choice: return to Colombia where she fears persecution, or remain indefinitely in Congo, a country she had never heard of before arriving on April 17. "They treat us like we're children," she said. "What would one do in a completely unknown place, without a place to live and without knowing what to do?"
Living Under Supervision
The deportees are housed in a hotel near Kinshasa's airport, their stay funded by Congo's government according to the International Organization for Migration. But the arrangement bears little resemblance to freedom. The woman said deportees are allowed to leave the hotel about once a week, only when accompanied by IOM staff who control where they go and what they buy. At a supermarket or bank, they are quickly ushered back to their vehicle, with IOM staff never out of sight. The hotel gates remain locked, and security personnel do not permit independent movement, according to the woman and one of the deportees' lawyers.
IOM staff have organized activities like painting, music and volleyball, but many deportees have stopped participating, bored with the routine. The woman goes for meals and remains in her room otherwise, making late-night calls to her 10-year-old daughter in Colombia and worrying when she will see her again. She said the food "has made us very sick," with stomach ailments ongoing. Local languages like French and Lingala are as foreign as her surroundings.
The Path to Congo
The woman said she left Colombia in 2024, following threats from armed groups and abuse by a former partner who worked for the government. She went to Mexico, where she waited for a border appointment booked with the U.S. government. When she presented herself at an Arizona port of entry in September 2024, immigration officials determined she had a credible fear of persecution, clearing her to apply for asylum, but kept her in ICE detention. "You spend a year and a half locked up, living the same day over and over again," she said. "You see fights, punishments where people are locked in cells for many hours. You lose your privacy even to use the bathroom."
She said some officers made racist remarks and that they "made derogatory comments toward us as migrants, shouted at us all the time and sometimes denied basic things like showers as punishment." In May 2025, a federal judge granted her protection under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, ruling she could not be safely returned to Colombia, according to court documents seen by the AP. She filed a habeas corpus petition and won her release in February. She moved to Texas and was required to wear a GPS monitoring device, but at her first check-in appointment with ICE, she was detained again.
"All they told me was that I was under detention, as they had found a third country for me," she said. Less than three weeks later, she was put on a plane to Congo. She and the other deportees arrived on April 17 after a nearly 24-hour charter flight during which their hands and feet were restrained. It was not immediately clear what a new U.S. court ruling, saying the U.S. likely broke the law by deporting a fellow Colombian to Congo, will mean for her.
Impossible Choices and Legal Questions
The IOM has offered her two paths: return to Colombia, where a U.S. judge has ruled she cannot safely be sent back, while receiving IOM "protection and assistance," or remain in Congo with no support. Alma David, the woman's U.S.-based attorney, said, "They are given impossible choices." She added, "By deporting them to a third country with no opportunity to contest being sent there, the U.S. not only violated their due process rights but our own immigration laws and our obligations under international treaties."
Congo is one of at least eight African countries that have made deals with the Trump administration to facilitate deportations of third-country nationals, which legal experts say are effectively a legal loophole for the U.S. Most deportees had received legal orders of protection from U.S. judges shielding them against being returned to their home countries, lawyers said. The details of Congo's deal with the Trump administration are not clear. Other countries have received millions of dollars to participate. Earlier this month, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi called the agreement an "act of goodwill between partners," with no financial compensation. He said, "We agreed to do so as a friendly gesture, simply because it was what the Americans wanted."
Tshisekedi also said, "We understand that psychologically they must be unsettled because, at first, they dreamed of living the American dream, and now they are living the Congolese dream — in a country they probably did not know and may never even have noticed on a map of the world." He added that the migrants are free to leave Congo at any time.
Human Rights Concerns Mount
Congolese human rights groups have called it a violation of international refugee law. The Congo-based Institute for Human Rights Research described the situation as "arbitrary detention by proxy for the United States." The current U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy says if a government has made blanket diplomatic assurances that it won't persecute people who are deported, no further process is required for deportation, not even giving deportees notice where they are being sent, David said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the Colombian woman's case, but it has asserted that third-country deportation agreements "ensure due process under the U.S. Constitution." The Trump administration says the agreements are needed to "remove criminal illegal aliens" whose country of origin will not take them back. An IOM spokesperson said the organization has provided the woman with humanitarian assistance based on an assessment of her vulnerability. It includes "protection interventions, referrals, rights safeguarding and promotion of migrants' overall well-being," with no details. The IOM also may offer "assisted voluntary return" — covering documents, flights, transit and temporary housing on arrival — with migrants' consent. The IOM said it plays no role in determining who is deported and reserves the right to withdraw its assistance for deportees if "minimum protection standards" aren't met.
The woman said she does not feel safe in Congo and has not chosen to apply for asylum there. It was not clear whether Congo's government would continue covering hotel costs after the deportees' visas run out. "The worst part is having to go through all of that without having committed any crime," she said, "simply for going to another country to ask for safety and protection."
Why This Matters:
This case exposes fundamental questions about the rule of law and the rights of asylum seekers when administrative convenience collides with judicial protections. When federal judges grant protection orders based on credible fear findings, those decisions represent the backbone of due process in immigration law. Circumventing them through third-country agreements undermines not only individual rights but the integrity of the judicial system itself. The human cost is borne by people like this Colombian woman, separated from her 10-year-old daughter and confined in a country she never sought to enter, with no clear legal pathway forward. The broader implications reach beyond these 15 individuals: if blanket diplomatic assurances can override specific judicial findings without notice or hearing, the protections enshrined in international refugee law and U.S. immigration statutes become functionally meaningless. Congo's own human rights organizations have recognized this as detention by proxy, highlighting how agreements between governments can create accountability gaps where vulnerable people fall through. The outcome of recent court rulings may determine whether such arrangements can continue, and whether the promise of asylum and judicial review retains substantive meaning.