ICE deports asylum seeker to Africa, where abuser who bought her as ‘wife’ is waiting to kill her, lawyers claim

The life of a Congolese asylum seeker granted permission to stay in the United States is in “grave danger” after ICE secretly flew her to an unknown African nation, while the woman’s husband – a widely feared local politician who allegedly had her father shot dead as she watched – continues to hunt her across continents, according to a tranche of federal court documents reviewed by The Independent.

In addition to fearing for her own safety, “Jane Doe,” as she is referred to in legal filings, “hopes for the safety of her children, whose whereabouts are unknown to her because their father, her husband, is seeking to kill them and so they are in hiding, even to her,” states an emergency motion Doe’s attorneys filed Monday in Louisiana. “She hopes for the safety of her brother, who was kidnapped in Mexico by a cartel and she has not seen him since.”

At the age of 14, “Jane Doe” - as the devoutly Christian and former hairdresser in the Democratic Republic of Congo - was forced to become the African politician’s sixth wife in order to satisfy a family debt, according to the motion. For the next decade, Doe was physically and sexually abused by her husband and two of his sons, bearing four children while being “kept like a hostage,” says the motion, which seeks Doe’s immediate return to the U.S.

In late 2024, Doe managed to escape to her parents’ house, the motion goes on. But Doe’s politician husband quickly found her, brutalized her and her brother, ordered his bodyguards to execute her father in front of her, and burned the family home to the ground, the motion says. When Doe went to the police, they said her only option was to leave the country because “her abuser was too powerful and… they could not protect her,” according to the motion.

“Ms. Doe went into hiding and fled the [Democratic Republic of Congo] with the help of her brother and his employer, who in secret obtained travel documents and plane tickets to Brazil,” it states. “Ms. Doe’s abuser continued to track her abroad. Within an hour of arriving in Brazil, Ms. Doe received a WhatsApp message from her abuser, stating he knew she was in Brazil and had ‘eyes everywhere.’ He threatened to kill her.”

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Terrified, Doe made her way through 12 different countries – even braving the notorious Darién Gap on foot – to get to the United States, where, the motion explains, “she believed human rights were respected.” It says Doe arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border on January 2, 2025, and immediately requested asylum. She was sent to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, as her case was processed, and last June received permission to stay in the U.S. under a “withholding of removal” decision barring her deportation to DR Congo.

However, that all changed on February 15, 2026, when ICE decided to send her to somewhere else.

Attorneys for Doe say they were never contacted by authorities about their client’s sudden removal and “don’t even know where [ICE] disappeared [her] to yesterday in the dark of night.” Doe was loaded onto a deportation flight bound for Senegal, Cameroon, Chad, Ghana and Nigeria, without any further information provided, the affidavit states, adding, “Ms. Doe has no connections, resources, money or way of contacting anyone in the world.”

The motion contends that Doe’s “unlawful removal means her life is in grave danger.”

Doe, according to a companion affidavit filed by one of her attorneys, is “an extraordinary woman.”

“She has lived through extensive trauma, and despite that, she smiles on video calls with me and tells me how she’s learning to make bracelets in ICE detention,” it says. “She reads her Bible and leads Bible study among other women in her detention facility. She finds a way to continue to hold onto hope… She hopes for her future education to be able to study medicine, to work as a nurse, and one day to run an orphanage. She hopes to see the outside of the detention facility where she has lived in the United States of America for 13 months: January 2025 to now.”

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The affidavit lauds Doe for fighting the June 2025 withholding of removal order, which the motion explains as “similar to asylum in that she proved it was more likely than not that she would be persecuted on account of a protected ground if she were removed to the Democratic Republic of Congo and that the government there was unable or unwilling to protect her.”

Last summer, ICE instructed officials that immigrants can be deported from the United States to countries other than their own with as little as six hours’ notice – or no notice at all.

That memo from ICE acting director Todd Lyons followed a Supreme Court decision that opened the door for ICE to send deportees to countries where they do not have citizenship, family or any other connections.

ICE has since spent more than $40 million and fought several legal battles over removals to far-flung nations where deportees have no connections whatsoever, including to several countries in Africa: Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda and South Sudan, among others.

In a June 2025 letter to authorities, filed as an exhibit in court, another attorney representing Doe wrote that she had been told ICE was considering Canada and Spain as possible third countries where they could deport her. However, her husband has family in both places, and could easily locate her there, the letter said. Guatemala, a third possibility floated by ICE, would be equally dangerous for Doe, who also speaks no Spanish, according to a follow-up letter.

Still, immigration authorities denied Doe her right to a reasonable fear interview concerning any potential third country, which Monday’s motion calls an “extraordinary and illegal measure.”

“Under our Constitution, this cannot stand,” the motion argues.

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Throughout, ICE has refused over the course of nearly nine months to communicate at all with Doe’s lawyers, according to the motion.

“Defendants communicate – if at all – solely with [Doe]: a high school graduate with no legal training who is a native French speaker and knows only limited English,” it maintains. “... This does not provide Ms. Doe meaningful notice or opportunity to respond. By excluding counsel from the equation and refusing to engage with her attorneys, Defendants have committed abhorrent behavior violating Ms. Doe’s rights.”

At 11 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, Doe’s legal team was notified by a family member that Doe had been told she “was being ‘moved,’” the motion states. “She reportedly did not have any information or know whether this ‘move’ was a transfer to a different facility or a removal to a third country.”

By 10 a.m. Sunday, Doe had vanished from ICE’s online detainee locator, according to the motion. It says Doe’s lawyers made at least 20 phone calls to eight different ICE officials, field offices, and detention facilities, but that no one answered.

Finally, around 1 p.m., an ICE officer picked up the phone and said Doe had been flown out of the U.S. on a 4 a.m. flight dropping deportees off in five African countries, but “could not identify which… was her destination,” the motion states. The officer referred the attorneys to a pair of higher-ups, who also never responded to their queries, according to the motion.

Doe’s lawyers argue the U.S. government has violated her Fifth Amendment right to due process, as well as a section of federal law that prohibits government agencies from”arbitrary or capricious” conduct.

They are demanding U.S. officials facilitate Doe’s return to the U.S., “without incident,” to release her upon entry, and to reimburse her for any costs incurred. Late Tuesday, a judge denied Doe’s motion and ordered her attorneys to refile their motion with additional specifics.

Doe’s attorneys declined to comment on the record. An ICE spokesperson did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment.

With reporting by Alex Woodward