DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Congo’s leader has characterized the situation as experiencing “the Congolese dream.” However, for 15 Latin American migrants sent to the African country during the previous administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, the reality resembles something far worse.
The Associated Press conducted an interview with a 29-year-old woman from Colombia who verified accounts from others sent to African countries: being transported in restraints despite having a US immigration court’s protective ruling, being confined to hotel accommodations with monitored excursions.
She faces an impossible decision: go back to her native country where she risks harm, or remain in Congo, a nation she had never known existed until her arrival.
“They treat us like we’re children,” she said as their three-month Congolese visas near an end, with no plan in sight.
“What would one do in a completely unknown place, without a place to live and without knowing what to do?” she added, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
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.
Speaking from the hotel in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where she and fellow deportees remain housed, the woman provided fresh information about the central involvement of the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated organization.
She explained that deportees can exit the hotel approximately once weekly, but only with IOM personnel accompanying them. During shopping trips or bank visits, they are rapidly escorted back to their transportation, with IOM staff maintaining constant oversight.
“They choose where we go and what we buy,” she said.
Inside the hotel, she reported, IOM workers have arranged activities including painting, music and volleyball, though many deportees have ceased taking part, tired of the repetitive schedule. She attends meals and otherwise stays in her room, placing late-night calls to her 10-year-old daughter in Colombia while worrying about their reunion.
Most notable is how IOM personnel are presenting deportees with their potential options.
Staff members have presented the woman with two alternatives: go back to Colombia, where a US judge determined she cannot be safely returned, while receiving IOM “protection and assistance,” or stay in Congo without any support.
“They are given impossible choices,” said Alma David, the woman’s U.S.-based attorney. “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 joins at least eight African nations that established agreements with the previous administration to enable deportations of third-country citizens, which legal authorities describe as essentially a legal workaround for the US. Most deportees had obtained legal protection orders from US judges preventing their return to home countries, attorneys stated.
The AP has spoken with others sent to African countries who faced dangerous choices, including a gay asylum-seeker from Morocco sent to Cameroon, where homosexuality is criminalized.
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.
The specifics of Congo’s arrangement with the previous administration remain unclear. Other nations have been paid millions to participate.
This month, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the agreement as an “act of goodwill between partners,” without monetary payment. This occurs as Washington has increased pressure on neighboring Rwanda regarding its backing of the M23 rebel group that has captured cities in eastern Congo — a situation some experts suggest may explain Kinshasa’s readiness to accept deportees.
“We agreed to do so as a friendly gesture, simply because it was what the Americans wanted,” Tshisekedi said, adding that the migrants are free to leave Congo at any time.
“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,” Tshisekedi said.
Human rights organizations in Congo have denounced it as a breach of international refugee law. A Congo-based Institute for Human Rights Research characterized the circumstances as “arbitrary detention by proxy for the United States.”
Current US Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy states that if a government provides general diplomatic guarantees against persecuting deportees, no additional procedures are necessary for deportation, including informing deportees of their destination, David, the attorney, explained.
“When they told me they were going to deport me, I almost fainted,” the Colombian woman said. She was told about Congo the day before the flight.
She explained she departed Colombia in 2024, after receiving threats from armed groups and experiencing abuse from a former partner employed by the government.
She traveled to Mexico, where she awaited a border appointment scheduled through the US government. Upon presenting herself at an Arizona entry point in September 2024, immigration authorities concluded she had credible fear of persecution, allowing her to seek asylum, but maintained her in ICE custody.
“You spend a year and a half locked up, living the same day over and over again. 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. “They made derogatory comments toward us as migrants, shouted at us all the time and sometimes denied basic things like showers as punishment,” she said.
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 submitted a habeas corpus petition and secured her release in February. She relocated to Texas and was mandated to wear a GPS monitoring device, but during her initial check-in meeting with ICE, she was detained once more.
“All they told me was that I was under detention, as they had found a third country for me,” she said.
Fewer than three weeks afterward, she was placed on an aircraft to Congo. She and fellow deportees landed on April 17 following a nearly 24-hour charter flight with their hands and feet restrained.
Currently they remain at a hotel near Kinshasa’s airport, in neat white bungalows. Congo’s government pays the expenses, the IOM stated. It remained unclear whether this would continue after the deportees’ visas expire.
The hotel entrance is secured according to one deportee’s legal representative. The Colombian woman also confirmed that security staff prevent them from leaving independently.
They were informed they could seek asylum, an option none have selected. “I don’t feel safe in Congo,” the woman said.
An IOM spokesperson stated the organization has supplied her with humanitarian aid based on evaluating her vulnerability. This includes “protection interventions, referrals, rights safeguarding and promotion of migrants’ overall well-being,” without providing specifics.
The IOM may also provide “assisted voluntary return” — covering documents, flights, transit and temporary housing on arrival — with migrants’ consent.
The IOM stated it has no involvement in deciding who gets deported and maintains the right to discontinue assistance for deportees if “minimum protection standards” aren’t satisfied.
The Colombian woman continues in uncertainty, feeling anxious. She reported the food “has made us very sick,” with ongoing stomach problems.
Local languages, including French and Lingala, are as unfamiliar as her environment.
“The worst part is having to go through all of that without having committed any crime, simply for going to another country to ask for safety and protection.”
