On Monday, DHS cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order preventing anyone from traveling to the U.S. from areas affected by the outbreak. Zapata’s lawyers say that she was deported to Congo well before the outbreak was announced, and she’s staying in the capital, Kinshasa, which hasn’t had any cases. On Tuesday, her lawyers pointed out in a court filing that Zapata already had medical conditions before being deported to a country that said it couldn’t care for her, and now she is particularly vulnerable in the midst of an Ebola outbreak.
At the time of Zapata’s deportation, Congolese officials said that they couldn’t care for her medical issues, which include “diabetes accompanied by black spots on her foot and back, peeling skin, blackened nails, and other manifestations consistent with severe vascular and metabolic disease.” In the U.S., she would get medical care with help from relatives in New Jersey. A federal judge ruled in 2024 that Zapata could not be returned to the country of her birth, Colombia, because she faced the likelihood of torture from her former intimate partner.
Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the U.S. government had to bring Zapata back to the U.S. Zapata had sued the federal government, and described how her ex-partner, who has connections to the Colombian National Police, had physically and sexually abused her, including stabbing her in her genitalia, repeatedly raping her, breaking her teeth, and cutting cross-shaped scars into her chest.
